Flex :: Posting XML without using

Alternate title: How I spent my weekend!

I needed to post a bit of XML to a a webserver (non-CF) for processing. I have done it in CFML using the following:

OK, easily enough in CFML, right? I thought I would build a new interface to my application using Flex. The post of XML to a webserver in Flex is as follows:

In theory this should work, in reality, it did not. I kept getting errors from the webserver stating that the XML was not formed correctly. Using ServiceCapture, I was able to verify that the xml going in was good. I also opened up my initial XML file with a hex editor to verify that there was nothing preceding the XML. All that checked out fine, but I still received errors.

It took quite a bit of research and a lot of trial and error, but I finally found the following snippet in the "ActionScript 3.0 Cookbook":

It's a bit verbose and may not be as pretty as the <mx:HttpService> tag, but it did the job and it allowed me to post my XML directly to the server for processing without containing it in a form field or as a name/value pair.

Sometimes the seemingly simplest of things can be a bit of a time consuming nightmare! There are a ton of resources out in the InterWeb, thankfully.

I <3 teh Int3rW3b