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Adobe AIR: Passing arguments into native executables

By Rich Tretola | December 15, 2009
19,238 views

I have completed a new chapter for the upcoming O’Reilly Flex 4 Cookbook on AIR Basics. This includes a section on how to work with native executables.

Here is what I did as part of this example.

First I created a simple application that included some native c code that simply accepted a few arguments and printed them to screen. I compiled this c application into an executable on Mac, Windows, and Linux Ubuntu.

I then created an AIR application that included the following snippets of code. Here is what is happening.

When the callNativeApp() method is called, I resolve a path to the NativeApps directory which has been packaged into my application. Then depending on which operating system is running the application, I point the file variable to the proper executable.

Next, I create a NativeProcessStartupInfo object and set the executable property. I also create a Vector of arguments that I set to the NativeProcessStartupInfo’s arguments property. These will be passed into the argc variable of my executable.

Finally, I create an instance of NativeProcess, I add an event listener to listen for ProgressEvent.STANDARD_OUTPUT_DATA, I start the process, and close the input.

The executable will simply look over argc and call printf on each which will then trigger the Progress event and Alert within the AIR application.

ActionScript snippet for this example.

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private var process:NativeProcess;

private function callNativeApp():void{
    var file:File = File.applicationDirectory;
    file = file.resolvePath("NativeApps");
    if (Capabilities.os.toLowerCase().indexOf("win") > -1){
        file = file.resolvePath("Windows/sample.exe");
    } else if (Capabilities.os.toLowerCase().indexOf("mac") > -1) {
        file = file.resolvePath("Mac/sample");
    } else if (Capabilities.os.toLowerCase().indexOf("linux") > -1) {
        file = file.resolvePath("Linux/sample");
    }
    var nativeProcessStartupInfo:NativeProcessStartupInfo =
    new NativeProcessStartupInfo();
    nativeProcessStartupInfo.executable = file;
    var args:Vector.<String> = new Vector.<String>();
    args.push("Rich Trretola");
    args.push("loves");
    args.push("Flex & AIR");
    nativeProcessStartupInfo.arguments = args;
    process = new NativeProcess();
    process.addEventListener(ProgressEvent.STANDARD_OUTPUT_DATA, onStandardOutputData);
    process.start(nativeProcessStartupInfo);
    process.closeInput();
}
           
private function onStandardOutputData(event:ProgressEvent):void{
    Alert.show(process.standardOutput.readUTFBytes(process.standardOutput.bytesAvailable));
}

c Code for this example.

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#include <stdio.h>

int main (int argc, const char * argv[]) {
    if(argc > 1){
        int i;
        for(i=1; i<argc; i++){
            printf("\n");
            printf(argv[i]);
        }
    }
    printf("\n");
    return 0;
}

Here are the results:

Screen shot 2009-12-15 at 1.03.52 PM

This should be enough to wet your appetite.

For the full source code you will have to wait for the book.

:-)
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Topics: Adobe AIR, c, Flex | 21 Comments »

21 Responses to “Adobe AIR: Passing arguments into native executables”

  1. Tweets that mention Adobe AIR: Passing arguments into native executables | EverythingFlex: Flex & AIR -- Topsy.com Says:
    December 15th, 2009 at 2:28 pm

    [...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Rich Tretola, christian george. christian george said: RT @richtretola Blogged: Adobe AIR: Passing arguments into native executables http://bit.ly/5g3ML7 [...]

  2. uberVU - social comments Says:
    December 15th, 2009 at 2:37 pm

    Social comments and analytics for this post…

    This post was mentioned on Twitter by richtretola: Blogged: Adobe AIR: Passing arguments into native executables http://bit.ly/5g3ML7...

  3. [AIR] AIR 2.0 Passing Arguments to Native Executables « Lab of Chowky Says:
    December 16th, 2009 at 4:16 am

    [...] Source: http://blog.everythingflex.com/2009/12/15/adobe-air-passing-arguments-into-native-executables/ [...]

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  13. ithel Says:
    February 9th, 2010 at 8:57 am

    Thanks for the news ^^
    I’ve tried to play with that new functionality and a program written in java. Communication of data encoded in UTF works fine in both ways, unfortunately it seems there is a problem when you want to send integers or even bytes in the way AIR -> java (they never reach their destination). Does anybody have the same problem?

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    Could you just hint me on what to do?Further if I make this application does it work on all variation of Linux.
    Thanks in advance

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  21. Ron Ferguson Says:
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    Does anyone know if it’s possible to use the native process to redirect text to a file using echo? For example, from within AIR send the following to a process:

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