thanks
cheers

I guess this makes sense that the ByteArray shouldn’t know about the reference table anyway, since it would be possible to read bytes into the ByteArray from multiple sources (different FileStreams) which would have separate reference tables.

You could process the raw ByteArray yourself using lower level read operations, but you would need to know what state the reference table was in (and unfortunately this is not obtainable from a NetConnection response). So instead that leaves you with completely custom serialization in the readObject()/writeObject() – such as buffering the IExternalizable content in a separate ByteArray first so that you know the references start at 0.

So I’ve been digging into the AMF spec for a bit, and have a guess at what’s going on here. I believe the reference tables used in AMF3 are not being utilized by the ByteArray after it has read all of the data.

It seems that if the reference tables are not available to/used by the ByteArray this would explain why

function readExternal(input:IDataInput):void {
…
var arr:Array = input.readObject() as Array;
}

would work but

function readExternal(input:IDataInput):void {
var ba:ByteArray = new ByteArray();
input.readBytes(ba);
…
var arr:Array = ba.readObject() as Array;
}

would not work.