Communication between c++ and actionscript 3

Question

Is it possible to use any IPC mechanism for calling a c++ api from Adobe Flash actionscript? Are there any good examples?

Update: I primarily want it for desktop ap

Answer 1

Not from the flash player, as it would very likely violate its security model. You can call C++ from the Tamarin VM, which for example mod-actionscript is doing. An option would be to pass your calls to an AS3-server, call some C++ functions there and send back the result. Another option is to cross-compile the C++ code to AVM2 using alchemy. But if you want to call C++ to access features on the client machine not available from the flash player (file system access, UDP or whatever), then there's no way.

edit:
Ok, I suppose there are the following options:

• have a look at the flash.accessibility package and solve it with AS3 only
• create a C++ daemon running in the background, which can have bidirectional communication with flash through
  • a local socket (you'd bind a port in the daemon and the flash client would connect to it) with a custom protocol
  • a LocalConnection. This looks a little better from the AS3 perspective, but requires a little hacking on the C++ side, since you need to get hold of the connection and implement the protocol (pointers here)
• use an alternative runtime: adobe air, zinc, swhx (requires Haxe though and the "backend" is neko, but neko can easily be extended)