Flash / ActionScript 3 / Flex : Reading browser cookies

Part of an ActionScript 3 project I was working on required me to pull cookies from the users browser into Flash. I tried hunting around google to find a good method to achieve this, but found a lot of articles that wanted you to alter the embed code for flash. I wanted to find a way inside Flash to read the users cookies.

I wrote some code to do something similar in ActionScript 2 that used LoadVars. This class has been removed in ActionScript 3.

This is the ActionScript 3 code I came up with. It uses ExternalInterface to execute a bit of javascript that will pull the cookies directly into flash. It alters the cookie string to make it look like a URL and runs it through URLVariables.

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01

package {

02	import flash.display.Sprite;

03	import flash.external.ExternalInterface;

04	import flash.net.URLVariables;

05

06	public class BrowserCookies extends Sprite

07

{

08	//this will parse the cookie data

09	private var _urlVariables:URLVariables;

10

11

/**

12	* Return all the cookie values in one object

13	* @return URLVariables

14

*

15

*/

16	public function get urlVariables() : URLVariables {

17	return _urlVariables;

18

}

19

20

/**

21	* Return one cookie value

22	* @param value String

23	* @return String

24

*

25

*/

26	public function getCookieValue(value:String) : String {

27	var returnValue:String = "";

28

29	if(_urlVariables && _urlVariables[value]) {

30	returnValue = _urlVariables[value];

31

}

32

33	return returnValue;

34

}

35

36

/**

37	* This will connect to the browser and pull cookies into flash

38

*/

39	public function BrowserCookies() : void{

40	//this will hold the data returned from javascript

41	var browserCookieString:String;

42

43	//pull the data from javascript

44	browserCookieString = ExternalInterface.call("function(){return document.cookie}");

45

46	//replace ; with & to make it look like a url

47	browserCookieString = browserCookieString.replace(/;\s/g, "&");

48

49	//parse the cookie string into variables. you can now access cookie variables as properties of this object

50	if(browserCookieString) {

51	_urlVariables = new URLVariables(browserCookieString);

52

}

53

}

54

}

55

}

Now you can access any cookie property inside flash. Here is a quick example of how to use the class. Assume BrowserCookies.as exists in the same folder as the example class.

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01

package

02

{

03	import flash.display.Sprite;

04	import flash.text.TextField;

05

06	public class Index extends Sprite{

07	public function Index(){

08	//this will pull all the cookies out of the browser

09	var urlVars:BrowserCookies = new BrowserCookies;

10	var textField:TextField = new TextField;

11

12	textField.width = 200;

13	textField.height = 200;

14	textField.text = urlVars.getCookieValue("today");

15

16	addChild(textField);

17

}

18

}

19

}

I've uploaded a Flex Projext Export version of this example available here. Feel free to contact me if you have any questions.