Sometimes people email interesting questions to me, and I sometimes forget the answers. So, I'll start posting the answer, along with relevant links to documentation, for the purpose of archiving all the interesting things I learn every day.
Today, I received an interesting question from Jim about loading XML feeds from external domains. Anyone who attempts to load external data from another domain will encounter a security barrier in the Flash player.
A Macromedia technote describes the security feature: "External data not accessible outside a Flash movie's domain."
The security feature is a good and necessary barrier to protect against trojan SWFs and abuse of data feeds. The good news is that the security feature doesn't stop the original author from creating a legitimate work-around with a server-side script. The Were-Here XML forum has several discussions on how to write server-side redirection scripts:
Were-Here discussion about elegant redirection solutions with Java and ASP
Another Were-Here discussion about PHP solutions.
In Flash MX the security model isn't quite as rigid as in Flash 5 (but a little more complex). You should take a look at the Flash MX security whitepaper written by Mike Chambers:
http://download.macromedia.com/pub/flash/whitepapers/security.pdf
Its a good read, with lots of interesting info
Posted by: jarle at April 29, 2002 06:33 AM<?php
readfile("http://nuthing.com/wateverxml.xml");
?>
every asp server runs php...and this one liner does it for me.... replace the "http://nuthing.com/wateverxml.xml" with $name, then file.php?name=URL will do the same...
nik
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