Some Random Dude

Some Random Dude is a blog by P.J. Onori that covers design & technology in the broadest sense possible.

Flash XML Caching Solution

I have found quite a few people run into this problem from time to time and there’s actually quite an easy solution to take care of such an issue:


xml.load("xmlFile.xml?"+Math.random());

Essentially, Flash will think that the file is a different URL each time it loads the file and the psuedo parameter (‘?+Math.random()’) will be ignored for the file request. Clever and effective.

The Discussion

11 Comments

    • By Tim

    Actually, this does not solve the problem. At least not in AS2.

    • By Tim

    WAIT! I WAS WRONG! IT DOES WORK!… It will work when you upload it and test it in a browser, but it wasn’t working for me when I just published the SWF by itself. Same thing happened when my text fields were pixelated (not smooth) and then when I view the SWF through the browser, the fonts were smooth.

    • By Adam

    Thanks for this! It worked a charm in AS2.

    • By Mak

    This works on AS3, thank you very much!

    • By Adam

    Man this solved so many problems! THANK YOU!!

  • Amazing solution… I thought that It didn’t work, but as team I didn’t realize that it works only when test embebbed in browser. Thanks a lot!

  • The issue isn’t solved if the xml is hosted on S3. Anyone have ideas there? I tried this method and did pull a random number attached to the xml path, but the old cached xml file was still pulled up. Is there additional steps needed for clearing the cache with Amazon?

  • Clever indeed :) thanks !

  • I have the same problem ! But my code is a little bit different…

    fsGallery = this.attachMovie(“$fsGallery”, “$fsGallery”, 10, {$activated: true, $XMLFile: “_xml/data.xml?”+Math.random(), $thumbNailMc: “thumb”, $imgContainerMc: “imgContainer”, $imgMc: “img”, $loadingBarMc: “loadingBar”, $descriptionMc: “desc”});

    I can’t put the (‘?+Math.random()’)

    I need HELP…. :-(

    Sorry for my bad english

    • By petr

    ajmage – you need to put the querystring in the right form: ?variable=123. Simply ?123 doesn’t work, flash doesn’t accept it. Hope it helps.

  • Thanks a lot . This problem has been bugging me for a long time. This solution totally worked. Thumbs Up

Leave Your Own Comment