journal

BulkLoader is a minimal library written in Actionscript 3 (AS3) that aims to make loading and managing complex loading requirements easier and faster. BulkLoader takes a more dynamic, less architecture heavy aproach. Few imports and making heavy use of AS3’s dynamic capabilities, BulkLoader has a one-liner feel that doesn’t get your way.

BulkLoader tries to hide the complexity of loading many data types in AS3, providing a unified interface for loading, accessing and events notification for different types of content.

This library is licensed under an open source MIT license. Features:

• Connection pooling.
• Unified interface for different loading types.
• Unified progress notification.
• Events for individual items and as groups.
• Priority
• Stop and resuming individually as well as in bulk.
• Cache managing.
• Statistics about loading (latency, speed, average speed).
• Multiple kinds on progress indication: ratio (items loaded / items to load), bytes , and weighted percentage.
• Multiple number of retries.
• Configurable logging.

Design goals:

• Minimal imports.
• Few method to learn.
• Dynamic nature: items can be added by specifying a url as a String or a URLRequest .
• Items can be assigned an identifier key to be used on retrival.
• Only one class to learn / use.

BulkLoader tries to gracefully handle progress notification in these use cases:

• Few connections to open: bytes total can be used instantly.
• Many connections opened: progress by ratio
• Many connections opened for data of widely varying sizes: progress by weight.