Adobe has announced the addition of the new Loader.unloadAndStop() method for Flash Player 10. Here is the description from the beta 2 release notes:
unloadAndStop — This new ActionScript 3.0 API adds unload functionality similar to the unload behavior in ActionScript 2.0. After calling unloadAndStop on loaded content it will be immediately removed stopping all audio, removing eventListeners, and becoming inaccessible through ActionScript.
This new API addresses some of the issues I raised in my article "Failure to Unload: Flash Player 9's Dirty Secret". It doesn't enable content sandboxing, or provide a complete mechanism for explicit unloading, but it does make it much simpler to free a loaded SWF for garbage collection. It's still possible to prevent a SWF from being unloaded, but it's much more difficult to do by accident.
Kudos to the player team for putting this in. If you're concerned about this topic, please help Adobe out by testing this feature and reporting any problems.
Update: You can find more details on the Loader.unloadAndStop feature in my article "Additional Information on Loader.unloadAndStop".
Comments (15)
Great that it's finally in!
I actually just programmed an EventManager class last night (find it here: http://k2xl.com/wordpress/2008/07/02/as3-eventmanager-class-removealllisteners/
It has a function removeAllEventListeners() and can remove all listeners of an object, type of listener, function, or any combination of those.
I actually wanted to see your Janitor class but couldn't find it on the web.
Posted by: Danny Miller at July 2, 2008 04:45 PMURL: http://k2xl.com
Thank bloody 2#$@#! It is a much brighter day today ;)
Posted by: Kenny Bunch at July 2, 2008 07:22 PMURL: http://www.kennybunch.com
I was just coming back to comment on your original post about this as I just saw it. Agree, many many thanks to Adobe and the FP team, its great to see them reacting to our cries.
Posted by: Ian at July 2, 2008 10:06 PMURL:
Happy to here this. Thanks for the great news.
Posted by: Richard Summerhayes at July 3, 2008 02:12 AMURL: http://www.richardsummerhayes.net
it's 9am and I'm drinking champagne!!!
Posted by: paddy at July 3, 2008 02:22 AMURL:
I have been struggling with AVM1 Shell loading multiple AVM1 movies... components ... tabbing ... all kinds of issues. Hopefully this will help.
Worth a beer or 2 !
Posted by: DannyB at July 3, 2008 07:29 AMURL: http://www.nuff-respec.com
I wonder why they just didn't include this functionality in the current unload? Why force developers to refactor their code?
Posted by: Danny Miller at July 3, 2008 11:12 AMURL: http://k2xl.com
This still doesn't fix all of the garbage collection/memory leaking issues in FP, but it is a step in the right direction. I would like to see an AIR application run without an ever-growing memory footprint. That will be the day I celebrate for the dev team at adobe.
Posted by: Troy at July 3, 2008 05:25 PMURL:
so to use this unloadAndStop function, how do i enable it in the flash program? when I currently call it, it is unknown to flash.
Posted by: onsoup at July 8, 2008 10:57 PMURL:
very good to see.
I had invisioned that such a command would be able to be called on a variable or MovieClip reference it's self.
It sounds as if their garbage collector knows all the references to an object. Couldn't we tag something for deletion and have the garbage collector handle killing the references?
The solution mentioned here is great for 3rd party, but one built for inner project use would also save a lot of time i think.
or at least a way to trace the number of references an object has, to help us find our problems.
anyway, 3 cheers for progress, I'm sure this was a lot of work, and it will help me a ton!
I also love the other features that are coming with flash player 10. http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashplayer10/releasenotes.html
Posted by: Brian Davis at November 11, 2008 06:04 PMURL: http://www.flashkeep.com
This is a good step.
I have a big memory leak too on my project. I haven't installed FP10 because I am scared my work will no longer be compatible. I am using CS3 for now and I have no intention of buying CS4 right now.
My question is the following. Does this "new" function also removes all children from a parent movie clip or parent SWF?
Posted by: aurelplouf at November 11, 2008 06:04 PMURL:
Thanks for your persistence Grant. You are a great help!
Posted by: benbowes at February 15, 2009 07:32 AMURL: http://www.benbowes.com
Is there any workaround for Flash Player 9... like a method coded to do everything the unloadAndStop method does? We gave minimum requirements to schools in August, so thousands of computers are stuck with Flash Player 9 for a multi-million dollar project. This HUGE BUG affects a major management system we've developed in Flash and kills our plans for some of its features, such as loading huge Adobe Captivate training videos into the interface, because now they're almost guaranteed to sit there and rot until the player crashes... not to mention continuing to play in the background. Upgrading the player is simply not an option; I don't understand how such a serious bug was allowed in ANY official release of the player.
Posted by: Triynko at October 23, 2009 03:00 PMURL:
You can try the Janitor class I built a couple years ago. It requires that you manually register elements for cleanup, but it might help.
gskinner.com/libraries
Posted by: Grant Skinner at October 23, 2009 03:06 PMURL: http://gskinner.com/blog/
How can I check if unloadandstop has actually removed my SWF/MC?
Posted by: Nizzle at October 30, 2009 05:51 AMURL: