saving a movieClip to disk as swf in air, then reading it again

i have seen almost all relevant threads on almost whole internet. and i m still confused.. i m working on a drawing app ( flex / air ),

1- where user loads image file,(bitmapdata > bitmap > movieclip base layer)
2- add layer ( new sprite > movieclip "second object in display list")
3- draw on this sprite ( graphics.draw circle / etc开发者_JS百科, lot of other details etc)
4- usr can add more layers etc, name layers etc ... all sprites are of same size as bitmap

Q1. now i wanted to save this main movieClip (part of UIComponent ) as swf file. so user can read again and continue work. almost like i do with photoshop.

comment: i know it sounds too generic, to ask such detailed thing. so please be patient.. i have been fiddling around with byteArray. and Air File Object, flash.net.fileReference etc... Q2. (main question), i don't want to convert drawn sprites to bitmapdata and then do bytearray. ( in my mind) it will convert everything to pixels, which i don't want. Q3. is there some auto magical line which will do everything..(save drawn vectors / shapes) in sprites as is?? (less chances). if i can read swf as movieClip, i can check sprites for layers and everything else... problem is writing this to disk as swf file.

please share your thoughts and feel free to guide,in all possible directions.. thanks in advance for your valuable time..

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In an ideal world you would just write YourByteArray.writeObject(YourCanvasSprite); That doesn't work however since serialize only works with data that is readable and writeable (and public). So you need to make it possible to recreate the graphic. You might be able to simplify that by using IGraphics (http://help.adobe.com/en_US/FlashPlatform/reference/actionscript/3/flash/display/IGraphicsData.html) as these should be possible to serialize. So if you subclass Sprite and store "drawing commands" and the parameters, and let the object have a restore function, it should be possible to save it to a byteArray. It's far from a one-liner though, but probably a little bit easier than making and reading SVG.

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i'm thinking the cleanest solution to this problem would be to use SVG (maybe EPS). i'm unfamiliar with any library that will convert drawn vector objects into SVG, but since SVG is simply an XML file you could study the SVG architecture and create your own: W3C - Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) 1.1 (Second Edition). the following open source project may help you write one and can also be used to read SVG into Flash: New Flex and Flash SVGWeb Components

a less clean, and perhaps more complicated way to solve this problem could be to write your own SWFs, as you mentioned. in order to do so you would have to generate .swf file at runtime, which you could accomplish by using NativeProcess to pass arguments (namely an ActionScript file containing your drawing information, child layers with names, etc.) to MXMLC from the Flex SDK.

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i find both answers useful. and with time,i have realized that in both cases it might be more work than i can handle. meanwhile, i was testing other pixels bases approaches as well. so i finally took decision of going through pixel way. user can save layers as png files with transparency.

if some person (other readers) come to this post, i wanted to conclude quickly, i have found really valuable drawing library named "graffiti" for as3. it almost does 80% of things, which i was hoping to do. so i am using that and tweaking it for my needs. huge thanks and respect to all great ppl who replied from their valuable time..