Parsing a SWF file in Linux - linux

Question

We would like to write some automated process of fetching data from quiet a few SWF (Flash ActionScript 3) files.
Aside from that, we would like it to run automatically as a part of our automated-deployment-script (written in Ant, runs on Linux).
Do you guys know of any SWF-parsing tools that allow to check for instance-data-per-frame ? (Adobe AIR won't run in a console-linux, as far as I saw in Google)
Ideas ? :)

Answer 1

With Adobe AIR
We've done this using the Adobe AIR SDK. The AIR SDK versions 2.6 and earlier support Linux.
You don't need to go all the way to packaging your app for Linux desktop, just use the adl tool to run your application.
First, write an ActionScript application that loads and parses data from your SWFs and compile it as loader_app.swf
Then create an application descriptor xml, such as:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<application xmlns="http://ns.adobe.com/air/application/2.6">
<id>HelloWorld</id>
<versionNumber>0.0.1</versionNumber>
<filename>HelloWorld</filename>
<initialWindow>
<content>loader_app.swf</content>
</initialWindow>
<supportedProfiles>extendedDesktop</supportedProfiles>
</application>
To run this application under Linux, simply run:
> /<path_to_air_sdk>/bin/adl app.xml
Notes:
I vaguely recall that it is possible to run air in headless mode, but our workaround was to run a dummy VNC server on X display :99 and set DISPLAY=:99 to get adl to use that X server so we could run it from cron.
If you want multiple instances of your AIR app to run simultaneously, you'll need to change the field in the app.xml. AIR only creates one instance per id.
Let me know if you'd like clarifications on any step.
Without Adobe AIR
Another possibility is to use redtaramin which claims to allow running actionscript from the commandline. Unfortunately I have no experience with this tool.