Understanding AS3 shared objects

December 28, 2008 by Emanuele Feronato
Filed Under Actionscript 3, Flash • 10 Comments 

This is the AS3 version of Managing savegames with Flash shared objects.

In this post I’ll explain the basic of shared objects, then later I’ll add the feature to Designing the structure of a Flash game – AS3 version in order to have a game template more complete.

Let’s start with the result: that’s what we are going to create:

As you will see, the counter increases when you reload the page.

Let’s take a look at the script:

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package {
	import flash.display.Sprite;
	import flash.net.SharedObject;
	import flash.text.*;
	public class as3_shared_objects extends Sprite {
		var shared:SharedObject;
		public function as3_shared_objects() {
			shared = SharedObject.getLocal("reloaded");
			if (shared.data.visits==undefined) {
				shared.data.visits = 1;
			}
			else {
				shared.data.visits ++;
			}
			show_text(shared.data.visits);
			shared.close();
		}
		public function show_text(str) {
			var shared_text:TextField = new TextField();
			var format:TextFormat = new TextFormat();
			format.font = "Lucida Console";
			format.color = 0xffff00;
			shared_text.width = 300;
			shared_text.defaultTextFormat = format;
			shared_text.x = 25;
			shared_text.y = 15;
			addChild(shared_text);
			shared_text.appendText("You visited this page "+str+" times");
		}
	}
}

Line 3: importing the class handling shared objects

Line 6: declaring a SharedObject variable called shared

Line 8: getLocal() returns a reference to a locally persistent shared object (in this case reloaded) that is available only to the current client. If the shared object does not already exist, getLocal() creates one.

Lines 9-11: when looking at the visits value inside the shared ojbect, I set it to 1 if it’s undefined (it’s the first time I am executing the script)

Lines 12-14: if visits is not undefined, it’s not the first time I am executing the script, so I have to increment its value

Line 16: closing the shared object. Some docs say you may experience problems if you don’t close it… I tried and I haven’t any… but I am closing it anyway…

Download the source code

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10 Responses to “Understanding AS3 shared objects”

  1. Orion on December 28th, 2008 9:00 pm

    So how to make something like ‘this site has been visited total of x times?

  2. Jack Hopkins on December 29th, 2008 7:40 pm

    you could use javascript, there are many scripts on the ‘net
    good tut!

  3. Pixelero on January 2nd, 2009 1:58 pm

    Somehow if I update this by clicking on the headline ‘Understanding AS3 shared objects’ above, the counter increases by 2 ? – on a normal ‘F5′ browser update works correctly, and adds just 1.

  4. real reason on January 4th, 2009 1:02 pm

    To Orion: that isn’t the real reason he did this, it is there to show how u can have an update finished, for example: instead of updating each time u load it, it is updated each time that a level is finished, and it becomes the level number, not to show how many times u visit the page

  5. Danny on February 16th, 2009 11:00 am

    Very good, but dude, please change your logo back to the old one.

    I know that you paid money for this one, but you have to take the loss on the chin!

    Great blog though :)

  6. Broxter on January 14th, 2010 4:40 pm

    Thanks a lot! Just what I was looking for.

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