6.6 Introduction: Using Java in Actionscript

The Server Side Framework is not only limited by the provided API, but it can easily access the entire Java2 Framework and any other Java classes, providing an unlimited amount of possibilities for developers.

Mixing Java classes in your Actionscript code is really very simple. Have a look at the example below:

   var list = new java.util.LinkedList()
   
   for (var i = 0; i < 10; i++)
   {
   		list.add("Item " + i)
   }
   
   // Use a Java iterator to cycle through the list
   for (var it = list.iterator(); it.hasNext();)
   {
   		trace(it.next())
   }
   

As you can see from the code, Java classes can be instantiated and accessed using their fully qualified name.

With this approach there's really no limit to what could be achieved with SmartFoxServer PRO: parsing and writing XML, using XSLT and XPath, writing web services etc...

Not only Java classes can extend the possibilities of what you can do on the server side, but they may also help in obtaining better performance in critical parts of your code. For example in a complex 2D array loop you may want to use Java native collections instead of Actionscript arrays to get faster code execution.

» The Packages object

A special object called Packages is available to access Java classes outside of the J2SE standard packages.
In order to access your custom classes you should add them to the classpath in the start.bat (Win) or start.sh (Linux) scripts.

Here follows an example that shows how to create an instance of the User class inside the it.gotoandplay.smartfoxserver.data package

	var data = Packages.it.gotoandplay.smartfoxserver.data
	var user = new data.User()

A complete Extension example is provided with SmartFoxServer PRO showing how to integrate Java libraries in Actionscript, you can read it in chapter 8.7


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