Flash Remoting: The Definitive Guide

Visual Basic Datatype Conversion

Like C#, Visual Basic is a typed language. C# and Visual Basic have a lot in common, but there are many differences as well. The Flash gateway on the server takes care of the datatype conversions back and forth between the Flash client and the ASP.NET server.

Table A-7 shows the conversion from Flash ActionScript to Visual Basic.

Table A-7. Flash-to-Visual Basic datatype conversion

Flash (ActionScript)	Visual Basic
ActionScript object	flashgateway.IO.ASObject (implements java.util.map)
Array (indexed)	System.Collections.ArrayList
Array (associative)	System.Collections.HashMap
Boolean	Boolean
Date object	Date
Number	any numeric type
RecordSet	-
String	System.String
Undefined	Nothing
XML Object	System.Xml.XmlDocument
Null	Nothing

Table A-8 shows the conversion from Visual Basic to Flash ActionScript.

Table A-8. Visual Basic-to-Flash datatype conversions

Visual Basic	Flash (ActionScript)
FlashGateway.IO.ASObject	ActionScript object
FlashGateway.IO.ASObject with type property set	ActionScript object of that type
System.Collections.ICollection, object[]	Array (indexed)
System.Collections.HashTable, System.Collections.IDictionary	Array (associative)
Boolean	Boolean
Date	Date object
Number	Number
System.Data.DataSet	Array of RecordSets
System.Data.DataTable	RecordSet
System.String, System.Char	String
System.Xml.XmlDocument	XML object
Nothing	Null