Detect AIR versus Flash Player from an actionscript library

Question

I have an swc which needs to operate slightly differently depending on whether it is being hosted by AIR or not. I've seen two suggestions on the internet:

• Test Application.application for WindowedApplication.
• Test Security.sandboxType for Security.APPLICATION.

However, these don't seem to work in my .swc as the compiler can't find WindowedApplication or Security.APPLICATION. My library doesn't need any other AIR features so I assume it's not being linked to the AIR libraries, and I assume shouldn't be in order that it continues to work in flash player.

Any suggestions?

Answer 1

You can use the flash.system.Capabilities object to find out if you running under AIR.

var isAir : Boolean = (Capabilities.playerType == "Desktop");
var isFlashPlayer : Boolean = (Capabilities.playerType == "StandAlone");
var isBrowser : Boolean = (Capabilities.playerType == "ActiveX" || Capabilities.playerType == "PlugIn");
var isOther : Boolean = (Capabilities.playerType == "External");

Answer 2

I would try flash.utils.getDefinitionByName() which will allow you to pass one of the AIR API classes as a String. This should throw an error which you can catch in a Flex environment or be successful in an AIR environment.