Because data for a website comes in many formats, it helps to have a variety of ways to handle this data. This article covers the different methods available in ActionScript for exchanging data.
Working with external data in Flash (Page 1 of 6 )
Data
Data can come in many formats. It can be a text file, XML file located on a file system, or dynamic data/XML generated by a server at run-time.
In ActionScript you can load data from external sources into an SWF file. You can also send data from an SWF file for processing by an application server (such as Microsoft IIS, Macromedia ColdFusion MX, Macromedia JRun, IBM Websphere, BEA Weblogic, and so on) or another type of server-side script, such as ASP, PHP or Perl.
Macromedia Flash Player can send and load data over HTTP or HTTPS, or load from a local text file or XML file. You can also create persistent TCP/IP socket connections for real time messaging applications.
The following are the different ways that you can exchange data that are available in ActionScript.
getURL(), loadVariables(), loadVariablesNum(), loadMovie(), and loadMovieNum() methods
Flash 
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What is ActionScript?
