ACTIONSCRIPT 3 Developer’s Guide en

ACTIONSCRIPT 3.0 DEVELOPER’S GUIDE
Working with byte arrays
The ByteArray class includes several methods that make it easier to read from and write to a data stream. Some of these
methods include readBytes() and writeBytes(), readInt() and writeInt(), readFloat() and writeFloat(),
readObject() and writeObject(), and readUTFBytes() and writeUTFBytes(). These methods enable you to
read data from the data stream into variables of specific data types and write from specific data types directly to the
binary data stream.
For example, the following code reads a simple array of strings and floating-point numbers and writes each element
to a ByteArray. The organization of the array allows the code to call the appropriate ByteArray methods
(writeUTFBytes() and writeFloat()) to write the data. The repeating data pattern makes it possible to read the
array with a loop.
// The following example reads a simple Array (groceries), made up of strings
// and floating-point numbers, and writes it to a ByteArray.
import flash.utils.ByteArray;
// define the grocery list Array
var groceries:Array = ["milk", 4.50, "soup", 1.79, "eggs", 3.19, "bread" , 2.35]
// define the ByteArray
var bytes:ByteArray = new ByteArray();
// for each item in the array
for (var i:int = 0; i < groceries.length; i++) {
bytes.writeUTFBytes(groceries[i++]); //write the string and position to the next item
bytes.writeFloat(groceries[i]);// write the float
trace("bytes.position is: " + bytes.position);//display the position in ByteArray
}
trace("bytes length is: " + bytes.length);// display the length
The position property
Flash Player 9 and later, Adobe AIR 1.0 and later
The position property stores the current position of the pointer that indexes the ByteArray during reading or writing.
The initial value of the position property is 0 (zero) as shown in the following code:
var bytes:ByteArray = new ByteArray();
trace("bytes.position is initially: " + bytes.position); // 0
When you read from or write to a ByteArray, the method that you use updates the position property to point to the
location immediately following the last byte that was read or written. For example, the following code writes a string
to a ByteArray and afterward the position property points to the byte immediately following the string in the
ByteArray:
var bytes:ByteArray = new ByteArray();
trace("bytes.position is initially: " + bytes.position); // 0
bytes.writeUTFBytes("Hello World!");
trace("bytes.position is now: " + bytes.position);// 12
Likewise, a read operation increments the position property by the number of bytes read.
Last updated 6/6/2012
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