NativeProcess  - AS3

Indicates if running native processes is supported in the current profile. This property returns true only when running in the extendedDesktop profile. In addition, NativeProcess.isSupported is always false for applications installed as an AIR file. You must package an AIR application using the ADT -target native flag in order to use the NativeProcess class.

Indicates if this native process is currently running. The process is running if you have called the start() method and the NativeProcess object has not yet dispatched an exit event. A NativeProcess instance corresponds to a single process on the underlying operating system. This property remains true as long as the underlying operating system process is executing (while the native process is starting and until the process returns an exit code to the operating system.)

Provides access to the standard error output from this native process. As data becomes available on this pipe, the NativeProcess object dispatches a ProgressEvent object. If you attempt to read data from this stream when no data is available, the NativeProcess object throw an EOFError exception.

The type is IDataInput because data is input from the perspective of the current process, even though it is an output stream of the child process.

Related API Elements

Provides access to the standard input of this native process. Use this pipe to send data to this process. Each time data is written to the input property that data is written to the native process's input pipe as soon as possible.

The type is IDataOutput because data is output from the perspective of the current process, even though it is an input stream of the child process.

Related API Elements

Provides access to the standard output pipe of this native process. Use this pipe to read data from the native process's standard output. When data is present on this pipe, the NativeProcess object dispatches a ProgressEvent. If you attempt to read data from this stream when no data is available, the NativeProcess object throws an EOFError.

The type is IDataInput because data is input from the perspective of the current process even though it is an output stream of the child process.

Related API Elements

Constructs an uninitialized NativeProcess object. Call the start() method to start the process.

Related API Elements

Closes the input stream on this process. Some command line applications wait until the input stream is closed to start some operations. Once the stream is closed it cannot be re-opened until the process exits and is started again.

Attempts to exit the native process.

Parameters

Starts the native process identified by the start up info specified. Once the process starts, all of the input and output streams will be opened. This method returns immediately after the request to start the specified process has been made to the operating system. The NativeProcess object throws an IllegalOperationError exception if the process is currently running. The process is running if the running property of the NativeProcess object returns true. If the operating system is unable to start the process, an Error is thrown.

A NativeProcess instance corresponds to a single process on the underlying operating system. If you want to execute more than one instance of the same operating system process concurrently, you can create one NativeProcess instance per child process.

You can call this method whenever the running property of the NativeProcess object returns false. This means that the NativeProcess object can be reused. In other words you can construct a NativeProcess instance, call the start() method, wait for the exit event, and then call the start() method again. You may use a different NativeProcessStartupInfo object as the info parameter value in the subsequent call to the start() method.

The NativeProcess class and its capabilities are only available to AIR applications installed with a native installer. When debugging, you can pass the -profile extendedDesktop argument to ADL to enable the NativeProcess functionality. Check the NativeProcess.isSupported property to to determine whether native process communication is supported.

Important security considerations:

The native process API can run any executable on the user's system. Take extreme care when constructing and executing commands. If any part of a command to be executed originates from an external source, carefully validate that the command is safe to execute. Likewise, your AIR application should validate data passed to a running process.

However, validating input can be difficult. To avoid such difficulties, it is best to write a native application (such as an EXE file on Windows) that has specific APIs. These APIs should process only those commands specifically required by the AIR application. For example, the native application may accept only a limited set of instructions via the standard input stream.

AIR on Windows does not allow you to run .bat files directly. Windows .bat files are executed by the command interpreter application (cmd.exe). When you invoke a .bat file, this command application can interpret arguments passed to the command as additional applications to launch. A malicious injection of extra characters in the argument string could cause cmd.exe to execute a harmful or insecure application. For example, without proper data validation, your AIR application may call myBat.bat myArguments c:/evil.exe. The command application would launch the evil.exe application in addition to running your batch file.

If you call the start() method with a .bat file, the NativeProcess object throws an exception. The message property of the Error object contains the string "Error #3219: The NativeProcess could not be started."

Parameters

Related API Elements

Signals the native process has exited. The exitCode property contains the value the process returns to the host operating system on exit. If the AIR application terminates the process by calling the exit() method of the NativeProcess object, the exitCode property is set to NaN.

Signals that the NativeProcess has closed its error stream.

Signals that the native process has data available to read on the standard error (stderror) stream. The NativeProcess object dispatches this event when the child process flushes its standard error stream or when the internal buffer used to communicate between the processes is full. Do not write code that depend on the size of this internal buffer; it varies between versions and operating systems.

Signals that reading from the standard error (stderror) stream has failed. The NativeProcess object can dispatch this event when the runtime cannot read data from the native process's standard error pipe.

Signals that the NativeProcess object has closed its input stream by calling the closeInput() method. The NativeProcess object does not dispatch this event when the actual native process itself closes the input stream.

Signals that writing to the standard input (stdin) stream has failed. The NativeProcess object dispatches this event when the closeInput() method fails or when the runtime cannot write data to the native process's standard input pipe.

Signals that the NativeProcess has written data to the input stream for the child process. The NativeProcess object dispatches this event when data is written to the stream. This event does not indicate whether or not the child process has read any of the data.

Signals that the NativeProcess has closed its output stream.

Signals that the native process has data available to read on the output stream. The NativeProcess object dispatches this event when the child process flushes its stdout stream or when the internal buffer used to communicate between the processes is full. Do not write code that depend on the size of this internal buffer; it varies between versions and operating systems.

Signals that reading from the stdout stream has failed. The NativeProcess object can dispatch this event when the runtime cannot read data from the native process's standard output pipe.

package
{
    import flash.display.Sprite;
    import flash.desktop.NativeProcess;
    import flash.desktop.NativeProcessStartupInfo;
    import flash.events.Event;
    import flash.events.ProgressEvent;
    import flash.events.IOErrorEvent;
    import flash.events.NativeProcessExitEvent;
    import flash.filesystem.File;
    
    public class NativeProcessExample extends Sprite
    {
        public var process:NativeProcess;

        public function NativeProcessExample()
        {
            if(NativeProcess.isSupported)
            {
                setupAndLaunch();
            }
            else
            {
                trace("NativeProcess not supported.");
            }
        }
        
        public function setupAndLaunch():void
        {     
            var nativeProcessStartupInfo:NativeProcessStartupInfo = new NativeProcessStartupInfo();
            var file:File = File.applicationDirectory.resolvePath("test.py");
            nativeProcessStartupInfo.executable = file;

            var processArgs:Vector.<String> = new Vector.<String>();
            processArgs[0] = "foo";
            nativeProcessStartupInfo.arguments = processArgs;

            process = new NativeProcess();
            process.start(nativeProcessStartupInfo);
            process.addEventListener(ProgressEvent.STANDARD_OUTPUT_DATA, onOutputData);
            process.addEventListener(ProgressEvent.STANDARD_ERROR_DATA, onErrorData);
            process.addEventListener(NativeProcessExitEvent.EXIT, onExit);
            process.addEventListener(IOErrorEvent.STANDARD_OUTPUT_IO_ERROR, onIOError);
            process.addEventListener(IOErrorEvent.STANDARD_ERROR_IO_ERROR, onIOError);
        }

        public function onOutputData(event:ProgressEvent):void
        {
            trace("Got: ", process.standardOutput.readUTFBytes(process.standardOutput.bytesAvailable)); 
        }
        
        public function onErrorData(event:ProgressEvent):void
        {
            trace("ERROR -", process.standardError.readUTFBytes(process.standardError.bytesAvailable)); 
        }
        
        public function onExit(event:NativeProcessExitEvent):void
        {
            trace("Process exited with ", event.exitCode);
        }
        
        public function onIOError(event:IOErrorEvent):void
        {
             trace(event.toString());
        }
    }
}

 #!/usr/bin/python
 # ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 # Sample Python script
 # ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 
 import sys
 
 for word in sys.argv: #echo the command line arguments
     print word
 
 print "HI FROM PYTHON"
 print "Enter user name" 
 line = sys.stdin.readline()
 
 sys.stdout.write("hello," + line)