Recipe 17.4. Reading Data from a Shared Object

Problem

You want to read values that have been previously written to a LSO.

Solution

Read the values from the properties stored in the shared object's data property.

Discussion

There is nothing difficult about reading the values from a client-side shared object. All persistent values are stored in the shared object's data property, so you simply read the values from the data property, as follows:

// Read the value of exampleProperty from the shared object, 
// example, and display it in the Output window.
trace( example.data.exampleProperty );

By using a combination of reading and writing data, you can determine if this is the first time a user is viewing a .swf file.

// Create a shared object and store some data in it
var example:SharedObject = SharedObject.getLocal( "example" );

if ( example.data.previouslyViewed ) {
  // The user has already viewed the .swf file before, perhaps
  // we skip an introductory help screen here.    
} else {
  // This is the first time the user is viewing the .swf file
  // because previouslyViewed has not yet been set to true.
  // Set previouslyViewed to true so that the next time this
  // code is run we know the user has been here before.
  example.data.previouslyViewed = true;
  example.flush(  );
}