Actionscript "flash player has stopped a potentially unsafe operation" fix

When I program in actionscript I have to ba aware of the various updates each version of the plugin has. One new security feature(?) is when accessing an external url new versions of the plugin pop up with a security message:

"flash player has stopped a potentially unsafe operation"
well thats a pain in the @*$% if you have made a bunch of getUrl links in your script.
Anyway here is a workaround:
lets say I want to have 2 links, one to www.foobar.com and one to www.google.com hosted on my site www.lollipop.com I would usually have a line such as
getURL("http://www.foobar.com", _blank
and
getURL("http://www.google.com", _blank)
each referenced to a button.
Unfortunately this no longer is feasible because of the new popup "feature".
local urls are fine ie.
getUrl(/lovers/);
will get the local url and the path /lovers/ like so:
http://www.foobar.com/lovers/
So with a little help from php we call a helper script like so:
getURL("/helper.php?url=foobar");
and
getURL("/helper.php?url=google");
in the root of our php installed web server create the file helper.php:
/************************************************************************/

/* Simple forwading helper to external urls */

/* =========================== */
/* */
/* Copyright(c)2008 Bernard Edlington bernard(at)nexusinternational.jp */
/* http://www.nexusinternational.jp */
/* */
/************************************************************************/

// the following gets the url var passed to php and makes sure its lower case
$urlpass = strtolower($_GET['url']);
if ($urlpass == "foobar"){
header( "Location: http://www.foobar.com" );
exit;
}elseif ($urlpass == "google"){
header( "Location: http://www.google.com/" );
exit;
}else{
// for safety this last line will push all other vars to our web root
header( "Location: /" );
exit;
}
?>
Note similarly we could use javascript, asp, even modRewrite etc.. I just like php. The concept is always the same actionscript -> local url -> external url.
See no need for that silly security "feature" afterall.

Posted on Monday, June 2, 2008