Download a file with Adobe AIR

Question

How do I download a file from the internet in a Flex based AIR application.

I tried using a file with url set to the address, but I got a file does not exist error

Answer 1

I used seanalltogether's answer, and wrote this class to handle file downloading.

It is pretty simple. create a var downloader = new FileDownloader("url", "Local/Path"); and call downloader.load() to start downloading.

It also supports setting a function to be called when done, and at points while downloading. Passing the onProgress function the number of bytes that have been downloaded. ( I could not figure out how to get a fraction, since I could not figure out how to query the size of the file before it was downloaded)

package com.alex{
import flash.filesystem.File;
import flash.filesystem.FileMode;
import flash.filesystem.FileStream;
import flash.net.URLRequest;
import flash.net.URLStream;
import flash.utils.ByteArray;

public class FileDownloader
{

    // Class to download files from the internet

    // Function called every time data arrives
    //      called with an argument of how much has been downloaded
    public var onProgress :Function = function(t:uint):void{};
    public var onComplete :Function = function():void{};
    public var remotePath :String = "";
    public var localFile :File = null; 

    private var stream :URLStream;
    private var fileAccess :FileStream;

    public function FileDownloader( remotePath :String = "" , localFile :File = null ) {

        this.remotePath = remotePath;
        this.localFile = localFile;
    }

    public function load() :void {
        if( !stream || !stream.connected ) {
            stream = new URLStream();
            fileAccess = new FileStream();

            var requester :URLRequest = new URLRequest( remotePath );
            var currentPosition :uint = 0;
            var downloadCompleteFlag :Boolean = false;

            // Function to call oncomplete, once the download finishes and
            //      all data has been written to disc               
            fileAccess.addEventListener( "outputProgress", function ( result ) :void {
                if( result.bytesPending == 0 && downloadCompleteFlag ) {

                    stream.close();
                    fileAccess.close();
                    onComplete();
                }
            });

            fileAccess.openAsync( localFile, FileMode.WRITE );

            stream.addEventListener( "progress" , function () :void {

                var bytes :ByteArray = new ByteArray();
                var thisStart :uint = currentPosition;
                currentPosition += stream.bytesAvailable;
                // ^^  Makes sure that asyncronicity does not break anything

                stream.readBytes( bytes, thisStart );
                fileAccess.writeBytes( bytes, thisStart );

                onProgress( currentPosition );                      
            });

            stream.addEventListener( "complete", function () :void {
                downloadCompleteFlag = true;
            });

            stream.load( requester );

        } else {
            // Do something unspeakable
        }
    }
}}