Java library to encode / decode AMF

Question

Hi chaps,

I currently have a Java server that talks to a Flash client by passing JSON encoded data over a binary socket connection. Is there a way on either side to encode / decode packets as AMF instead of JSON? It seems to me that there should be some native support in Flash player for doing this? All the implementations I have found of AMF serialization seem to be embedded inside an application framework.

Simiarly so, does anyone know if it's possible to decode AMF packets independently of a connection implementation in Flash?

Answer 1

AMF stands for Actionscript Messaging Format and is supported by the flash player itself out of the box. For the Java side, I'm sure there's some library already written. Red 5 is an open Flash Server written in Java that supports AMF, so you could check it out.

PS:

Looks like AMF serialization / deserialization is dealt with in this package (red 5 code): http://red5.googlecode.com/svn/java/server/tags/0_9rc1/src/org/red5/io/amf/. Not sure if there's a nice standalone API for this, though.

Answer 2

You can use OpenAMF's AMFDeserializer class,

http://www.openamf.com/javadocs/org/openamf/io/AMFDeserializer.html

You can also use the relevant classes in RED5 and BlazeDS.