Richard Willis

There is a fantastic technique for getting graphics drawn in Flash into Flex by means of classes compiled into a swc. It’s a really nice little method and if you wanna learn about it Ultraviolet Design have a great post about it here. I’m pointing you towards their post as this post is not going to be about that. Instead it’s going to be about what happens when that technique - which usually works fine - goes unexpectedly and bafflingly wrong.

Last week, having picked up a half-finished project from a new client that utilised said technique, I made changes to some of the graphics in the .fla and recompiled the swc. At which point, over in FlexBuilder, the ‘Problems’ dialog flashed up 99 seperate errors. 33 each of the following three:

All 33 library assets that had been assigned classes were gone? How? Where? Why?

The answer: I don’t know, but I do know how I fixed it. The problem was in the .fla file. If the file had been saved it was incapable of exporting a valid swc. It looks like a bug in Flash or possibly with the actual .fla itself. But there is a fix and this is it:

1. Open a new .fla file
2. DON’T SAVE IT, NEVER SAVE IT
3. Copy the entire library contents from the saved ‘corrupt’ .fla to the refresh, unsaved one
4. In the ‘Publish Settings’ ensure that ‘Export SWC’ is clicked and that the swf is exporting to the right location with the right name
5. Compile the swf

When I did this all 99 of my errors disappeared.

I think to call this a ’solution’ is euphemistic but it worked for me and might well work for you. I guess the only real solution is for Adobe to bugfix their own product. Whilst we wait for that to happen though, we can use this workaround.

Tags: ActionScript3, AS3, error, FlashBrighton, swc

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 11th, 2008 at 1:22 pm and is filed under AS3, Bugs, Flash, Flex. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.