An alternative to Flashvars: a Query String

One thing I did not expect when using Flashvars was that one of my students would experience what appears in all ways to be the browser caching the swf with the Flashvars. (Caching means that the browser saves the file and gets it from the temporary internet files instead of checking for changed files from the server.) I did expect the swf to cache, but not the Flashvars. After all the whole reason for the invention of Flashvars was to allow the passing of variables to a swf from the HTML without the swf having to be re-downloaded every time.

I suspect that this is something to do with the students computer and testing from the local machine rather than a server.

However, to solve my student's problem, the good news is that Flashvars is not the only way to pass variables to a swf from the HTML. Last time I mentioned 3 options, hard coding, XML or Flashvars. But I missed one: the Query String.

The Query String

This is really well explained in this website here (click).

But to quickly sum it up, one way we can pass variables to flash from the HTML page in which the flash is Objected and Embedded is by tagging them on to the end of the swf location path.

Normally the swf location path might appear something like this:

For Object:

PARAM NAME=movie VALUE="flaMovie.swf"

For Embed:

src="flaMovie.swf"

We pass the variables to the swf by tagging them onto the end of the swf location path as follows:

For Object:

PARAM NAME=movie VALUE="flaMovie.swf?currentvid=videoname.flv&duration=999"

For Embed:

src="flaMovie.swf?currentvid=videoname.flv&duration=999"