User Guide

264 Chapter 14: Data Integration (Flash Professional Only)
The following illustration shows the runtime process of the data binding engine. The four
attributes that handle data types are shown in the illustration and discussed in the following text.
Kind When Flash wants to get data from a component, the data is fetched from the component
according to the Kind setting. At this point, the data is in whatever format the component
provides (the raw form of the data). For example, the XMLConnector component always
provides data as a string, the NumericStepper component provides data as a Number, and so on.
Encoder The encoder’s job is to convert this data to an ActionScript data type. For example,
the string data that you get from an XML document can represent a date or a number. If data
binding needs the data in string form (because it is being assigned to a text component, for
example) the formatter does this conversion. If there are several bindings from a field, the
formatter is used only for those bindings that are assigning to a field whose type is String.
Store raw data
into component
Fetch raw data
from component
Kind
Convert into
raw form
Convert from
raw form
Encoder
(maybe)
Convert from String
Type conversion
Validation
(maybe)
Convert to String
Formatter
DataType
Component
GET DATA SET DATA