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YDN Flash Developer Center Astra Web APIs
Flash Developer Center

ASTRA Web APIs

The Yahoo! ASTRA Web APIs library is a set of wrapper tools that facilitate access to Yahoo! public APIs from Flex and Flash applications. The library creates an abstraction layer above the communication protocols used by Yahoo! servers, enabling Flash and Flex developers to send and retrieve data without any manual parsing. The Web APIs library is easy to install and all accessible methods are fully documented. The ActionScript library is available under an open source license. Use of the APIs themselves are subject to their respective Terms of Service.

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Flex Builder Installation

To use the Yahoo! Astra Web API library with Flex Builder, you need to add the library SWC file to your project's build path.

  1. In Flex Builder, goto the Project menu and choose Properties.
  2. Choose ActionScript Build Path.
  3. Goto the Library path tab.
  4. Click the Add SWC... button and select AstraWebAPIs.swc from the file system. It should be located at [download location]/Build/AstraWebAPIs.swc.
  5. Click the OK button to return to your project.

Flash CS3 Installation

To use the Yahoo! Astra Web API library with Flash CS3, you need to add the ActionScript 3.0 source code to your FLA file's classpath.

  1. In Flash CS3, goto the File menu and choose Publish Settings....
  2. Goto the Flash tab.
  3. Click the Settings... button.
  4. Add the Source folder to your FLA file's classpath. It should be located at [download location]/Source/.
  5. Click the OK button on the ActionScript Settings dialog.
  6. Click the OK button on the Publish Settings dialog to return to editing your FLA file.

To get more details on how to use the Astra Web APIs, consult with provided examples, and read the Web APIs Class Reference.

Support and Community

To get help and ask questions about Yahoo! ASTRA Web APIs, please visit the ydn-flash Yahoo! Group. Be sure to send bug reports and feature requests here too!

Additionally, we recommend visiting the Yahoo! Flash® Blog for the latest news and announcements about Flash projects at Yahoo!.

Web APIs Overview

Yahoo! Answers AS3 API

Yahoo! Answers is the most popular Q&A service in the world, with hundreds of millions of users and tens of millions of questions and answers. That entire dataset is available for search and retrieval via the web APIs, and now via the ActionScript APIs as well.

Yahoo! Answers AS3 API is contained in the packages com.yahoo.webapis.answers.*, com.yahoo.webapis.answers.events.*, and com.yahoo.webapis.answers.params.* (click the links to access corresponding documentation), and consists of 12 distinct classes. The main entrypoint to the Answers AS3 API is the AnswersService class. To see Answers AS3 API in use, check out the Weather+Answers Mashup tutorial or the Answers browser tutorial.

Yahoo! Weather AS3 API

Yahoo! Weather provides current detailed meteorological conditions and forecasts for over 60 thousand locations around the world, from Aruba to Zimbabwe internationally, and from zip code 00210 to 99950 in the US. The data is updated hourly and comes with a full set of weather icons to reflect the conditions. The current weather report, in addition to temperature, contains full details on wind conditions, sunrise and sunset times, atmospheric conditions, and other data.

Yahoo! Weather AS3 API is contained in the packages com.yahoo.webapis.weather.* and com.yahoo.webapis.weather.events.* (click the links to access corresponding documentation), and consists of 11 distinct classes. The main entrypoint to the Weather AS3 API is the WeatherService class. To see Weather AS3 API in use, check out the Weather+Answers Mashup tutorial.

Yahoo! Search AS3 API

Yahoo! Search indexes 19.2 billion web documents, 1.6 billion images, and over 50 million audio and video files. The search indices are updated daily and in addition to site search, feature image, video and audio search, song downloads, album lookup, news search, term extraction, spelling correction, related suggestions, local and context-based searches. All of these are accessible via the AS3 API.

Yahoo! Search AS3 API is contained in the packages com.yahoo.webapis.search.*, com.yahoo.webapis.search.events.* and com.yahoo.webapis.search.params.* (click the links to access corresponding documentation), and consists of 20 classes. The main entrypoint to the Search AS3 API is the SearchService class. To see Search AS3 API in use, check out the Search tutorial.

Yahoo! Upcoming.org AS3 API

Yahoo! Upcoming.org is a social event calendar with an open API. The Upcoming.org API allows users to manipulate all aspects of the calendar: edit and post events, create groups and venues, retrieve lists of events and metro areas, and so on. The AS3 wrapper provides convenient access to that functionality via native AS3 classes.

Yahoo! Upcoming.org AS3 API is contained in the packages com.yahoo.webapis.upcoming.*, and com.yahoo.webapis.upcoming.events.* (click the links to access corresponding documentation), and consists of 11 distinct classes. The main entrypoint to the Upcoming.org AS3 API is the UpcomingService class. To see Upcoming AS3 API in use, check out the Upcoming Event Browser tutorial.