Extracting Actionscript from .fla file, without Adobe Flash

Question

Unlike this guy, I'm using MTASC's Haxe to compile SWF from AS. Considering I don't have Adobe CS, what are our options to extract the action scripts from any FLA file?

I mean different versions, like CS4, CS5, etc. Converting older versions to CS5 would also help.

Dissuasion

Answer 1

CS4 FLA container is Microsoft Structured Storage (like MS Word documents). You can open it with for example FAR Manager or OpenMCDF. Embedded AS3 code can be seen inside the objects in Unicode plaintext. You can open it with a text editor that supports Unicode encoding (2-byte UCS-2 Little Endian, not UTF8), and trim off binary garbage.

CS5 FLA is just a ZIP with AS3 code inside DOMDocument.xml.

Sudderth

Sounds good enough. Too bad almost 4 years later I don't have the will or resources at hand to test it. ;P – Dissuasion

I managed to install and run FAR Manager, and to find my .FLA file on disk using it, but beyond that I'm clueless. Do I need to install a plugin for Microsoft Structured Storage files? – Puryear

Answer 2

If the provider of your FLA is using CS5, the FLA is saved in a zip-based XFL format. You could then simply rename the .FLA extension to .ZIP and unzip to view its contents. Any frame scripts will be located in DomDocument.xml.

See Lee Brimelow's post on the subject for more detail: http://blog.theflashblog.com/?p=1986

Damson

That's sweet! But what if it isn't CS5? I believe mine isn't. – Dissuasion

@Cawas You said any FLA file. Which is it ? any file ? or a specific file you are trying to open. Not really sure how this would help as you would not be able to track the timeline or embedded assets. Honestly... if it is just one FLA you can download a demo of CS5 then reformat the stuff so that it can work as the XFL format. I doubt you are getting an endless supply of FLAs without the source. – Merriment

@Merriment the internet is almost an endless supply of FLAs "without the source". And I thought FLA was the source. I'm not also sure how it would help, but I hope it does. – Dissuasion

The answer to this question sounds like an interesting possibility: #311654 (Assuming you have access to Windows.) – Damson

I've just tried that excellent idea, strings is a common command in mac. But it brought nothing from the AS part of the FLA. It only worked on a CS5 file I've tried, after applying your trick, and it finds the scripts inside the DOMDocument.xml, to which I can just open and don't need the strings. – Dissuasion

Answer 3

You can use FFDEC in order to extract the scripts and assets:

https://www.free-decompiler.com/flash/download/

Loxodromic

JPEXS Free Flash Decompiler is for decompiling SWF files to FLA, not for extracting scripts in the FLA files. – Graft