June 30, 2001 - Detecting a Flash Movie's URL

Yehuda Shiran June 30, 2001
Detecting a Flash Movie's URL
Tips: June 2001

Yehuda Shiran, Ph.D.
Doc JavaScript

In some of your applications you may need to use Flash movies and JavaScript directly, without any prepackaged APIs such as FlashSound JavaScript API. You will enjoy more features, methods, and properties, but you'll have to take care of all the tiny details that are taken for granted when using FlashSound API, for example.

One of the "tiny" details is embedding the Flash object. The JavaScript file flashcheck2.js does exactly this, as well as other stuff. For example, it checks whether a Flash player exists (Flash plug-in or ActiveX control), and whether its version is higher than the minimum required by the application.

Use the TGetProperty() Flash method to get attributes of the Flash movie. One of the properties is URL. You may get this property, but you cannot set it. The URL property designates the location of the SWF file. You get a Flash property like this:

  mySwf.TGetProperty(timeline, propertyNumber);
The URL property is no. 15, so you get its value by going:

  mySwf.TGetProperty(timeline, 15);
Play the following movie by clicking the Play link. Get the URL of the movie by clicking the Get URL link. Of course, you can get the movie's URL without playing it first:

Rewind | Play | Get URL

Here is the source code:

<SCRIPT LANGUAGE="JavaScript" SRC="flashcheck2.js"></SCRIPT>
<A href="javascript://" 
   onclick="javascript:mySwf2.Rewind(); 
   return false">Rewind</A> | 
<A href="javascript://" 
   onclick="javascript:mySwf2.Play(); 
   return false">Play</A> | 
<A href="javascript://" 
   onclick="javascript:alert(mySwf2.TGetProperty('/', 15)); 
   return false">Get URL</A>
<SCRIPT LANGUAGE="JavaScript">
  var mySwf2 = Flash_embedSWF("opener.swf", "opener");
</SCRIPT>