Sending form data with Actionscript 3

January 8th, 2008 | as3 tutorial

So I just spent a few hours trying to figure out how to submit form data with Actionscript. It really isn't very hard, so I have discovered after a little research. I am going to show you an example of how to do it which I wouldn't describe as "best practice" but it works.

The reason I describe this as less than best practice is because when you send data to the sever you get no response. So, even though it works 99.9 per cent of the time, you do not get a confirmation that the server received your request.

All my client wants is for a user to be able to enter his / her email address in to a box and have and email sent and then add that email address to an email. So really we are just sending some text to my client from a form. We want the user to enter the text and click send and have it be sent without another browser window opening.

The model for this is as follows: flash will send data to a URL with the POST method and a PHP file will get the data and send an email to my client.

So we need 2 things:

The actionscript...

PLAIN TEXT

Actionscript:

var request:URLRequest = new URLRequest( "http://mysite.com/submit.php" );
var variables:URLVariables = new URLVariables();
variables.email = emailSubmitText;
request.data = variables;
request.method = URLRequestMethod.POST;
sendToURL(request);

and the PHP:

PLAIN TEXT

PHP:

$emailAddress = $_POST['email'];
$to = "email@somehost.com";
$subject = "You have a new subscriber";
$body = $emailAddress;
if (mail($to, $subject, $body)) {
echo("Your message was sent");
} else {
echo("There was a problem.");
}

110 comments ↓

#1 Gleapsite on 01.29.08 at 5:35 pm

If someone were malicious they could hijak your php script in order to spam the target email address. from the linux prompt:

wget –post-string ‘email=insert my spam message here…’ \
http://yoursite.com/emailscript.php

from php you can call the same command using shell_exec() function, or use the bultin php HTTP request:

http_post_data ( “yoursite.com” , “email=spamspamspam”)

—

So how do we protect from that? well first, we can build in distrust into the PHP backend. we can Regex the $_POST['email'] variable to validate it as an email:

if(eregi(”^[_a-z0-9-]+(\.[_a-z0-9-]+)*@[a-z0-9-]+(\.[a-z0-9-]+)*(\.[a-z]{2,3})$”, $email)){
//send email
}else{
//possible spamming/hacking attempt
}

–
We can also build in sessions and AI so the server only allows X requests per UNIT_OF_TIME from a certain client.

Of course your current implementation is reasonably secure by obscurity: someone would need to be dedicatedly looking for holes in your site, but auto-compromising bots probably wouldn’t catch it.

On a side note, I’ve subscribed to your RSS.

#2 Eddie on 01.30.08 at 11:46 am

I am glad that you posted this comment because my code was definitely lacking proper validation. That said I think you should look at this article:

http://www.ilovejackdaniels.com/php/email-address-validation

This seems fairly comprehensive.

#3 Gleapsite on 01.30.08 at 5:11 pm

I love ilovejackdaniels. his cheat sheets are hanging up in my office, they’re the best web development quick reference guides.

#4 Peter on 04.22.08 at 3:40 am

I am confused as to how you call the variable “email”. Everytime I try to enter a var value for my input text it tells me its not possible in actionscript 3.0 and that i should use 1.0 or 2.0….

#5 Eddie on 04.22.08 at 7:28 am

Are you talking about in the Actionscript or the PHP?

Eddie

#6 DeepBlock on 06.24.08 at 6:34 pm

nice, any listener rather the process completed successfully or not?

#7 AS3 Tutorial - Sending form data AS3 + PHP « Flash Enabled Blog on 06.25.08 at 12:23 am

[...] can find at this tutorial the source code of AS3 and PHP script, in order to submit data to an email. No Comments Leave [...]

#8 dhan on 07.02.08 at 4:12 pm

Use URLLoader.load to get a return message from php.

#9 Eddie on 07.03.08 at 12:17 pm

@dhan,

Thanks! I meant to update this post with that information but haven’t had the time.

Eddie

#10 lifeso on 07.19.08 at 11:33 pm

#11 Dominges on 07.24.08 at 12:14 am

#12 Detrus on 09.15.08 at 3:27 pm

This is a good method for sending mail when the swf file is on a different domain than the php file that sends the email.

if you use loader.load(request) you need to set up a crossdomains.xml file on the domain of the php file. Otherwise flash gives a security sandbox violation

#13 ÐžÐ»ÐµÐ³ on 09.20.08 at 10:17 am

#14 parker on 10.21.08 at 8:46 pm

you could just create a RegExp object within flash to test the email instead of php. then request cookies with the SharedObject object to detect whether or not that computer has entered data already, then block the machine that way.

#15 lul on 10.29.08 at 1:00 am

how is the email confirmed – isn’t a button listener required in the actionscript? Am i missing something?

#16 Eddie on 10.29.08 at 9:34 am

What do you mean by confirmed? Do you mean how does the actionscript know if the email actually sent?

#17 ÐÐ°Ñ‚Ð°Ð½ on 11.11.08 at 5:48 pm

#18 Ð“Ð°Ñ€Ñ€Ð¸ on 12.28.08 at 6:39 am

#19 marin on 01.18.09 at 10:20 pm

hey what if i want to send more than 1 variable to the mail, how do i do that?

#20 Eddie on 01.18.09 at 10:29 pm

@marin

You would have to do 2 things. You would need to set the variable up on the Flash side.

var emailName = “Eddie”;
variables.name = emailName;

“variables” is just an array, you add values to it by doing variables.whatever.

Then in the php, since you are using post you use

$name = $_POST['name'];

Does that make sense?

#21 Ð¤Ð¸Ð»Ð¸Ð¿Ð¿ on 02.01.09 at 3:53 am

#22 Sending form data with Actionscript 3 â€” Flash Flood « Enjoy+ Development Blog on 02.03.09 at 5:21 am

[...] Comment! Sending form data with Actionscript 3 â€” Flash Flood. [...]

#23 Paul on 02.20.09 at 1:51 am

Staff

#24 Aaron on 03.29.09 at 2:33 am

I couldn’t find a good example of this anywhere. Thank you very much. My project is working!

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#51 James on 07.09.09 at 8:29 pm

Thanks for posting this. It was a big help, your code works perfectly!
I used this ASP file on the backend instead of the php one:

<%
string From = Request["email"];
string msgText = “Thank you for signing to our Newsletter!\n\n\n”;
msgText += “\n\nE-mail Address: ” + From;
string strTo = “email@email.com”;
string strFrom = “mail@domain.com”;
string strSubject = ” Newsletter Signup”;
SmtpMail.SmtpServer = “mail.domain.com”;
SmtpMail.Send(From, strTo, strSubject, msgText);
SmtpMail.Send(strFrom, From, strSubject, msgText);

James

#52 James on 07.09.09 at 8:30 pm

whoops forgot the closing bracket! (for the ASP code above)

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#65 JackOD on 09.10.09 at 10:08 am

Hello sorry if this seems stupid but this looks as if its the simplest tutorial on the submit button ive found but im still not getting it,

could you please tell me, in the as3 script you posted which piece of text refers to the forms and which applies to the button?
as in what instance do i give my forms and button for this script to work?

thankyou

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#67 szergej nyergelj on 09.26.09 at 4:40 am

HÃ¼lye ruszkik! kussoljatok, ne itt pofÃ¡zzÃ¡tok meg a szaros kurvaanyÃ¡tok nyelvÃ©n a hÃ¼lyesÃ©geiteket…
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Sending form data with Actionscript 3

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