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I’ve encountered some odd behavior that I would have expected to work when calling readObject() to de-serialize an array of anonymous objects. If anyone knows what’s going on here, please enlighten me. I’ve also filed a bug on Adobe’s bug tracking system if anyone wants to follow the progress at Adobe’s end.

I’m trying to read all of the bytes in the readExternal() function of a class implementing IExternalizable, so that I may use the position property to move back in stream in case I need to do so. The problem only seems to occur if I am trying to de-serialize an Array of anonymous objects. If I put plain old Strings in the Array it will work fine. I find this odd since I would expect

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

to have the exact same behavior as:

public function readExternal(input:IDataInput):void {
  var ba:ByteArray = new ByteArray(); 
  var inputBytes:uint = input.bytesAvailable;
  input.readBytes(ba);
  var baBytes:uint = ba.bytesAvailable;
  var arr:Array = ba.readObject() as Array;
  trace("inputBytes == baBytes ?= " + (inputBytes == baBytes)); // traces "inputBytes == baBytes ?= true
}

AIR installer and code attached below… Read the rest of this entry »