8.4 Resources

Haxe provides a simple resource embedding system that can be used for embedding files directly into the compiled application.

While it may be not optimal to embed large assets such as images or music in the application file, it comes in very handy for embedding smaller resources like configuration or XML data.

8.4.1 Embedding resources

External files are embedded using the -resource compiler argument:

-resource hello_message.txt@welcome

The string after the @ symbol is the resource identifier which is used in the code for retrieving the resource. If it is omitted (together with the @ symbol) then the file name will become the resource identifier.

8.4.2 Retrieving text resources

To retrieve the content of an embedded resource we use the static method getString of haxe.Resource, passing a resource identifier to it:

class Main {
  static function main() {
    trace(haxe.Resource.getString("welcome"));
  }
}

The code above will display the content of the hello_message.txt file that we included earlier using welcome as the identifier.

8.4.3 Retrieving binary resources

While it's not recommended to embed large binary files in the application, it still may be useful to embed binary data. The binary representation of an embedded resource can be accessed using the static method getBytes of haxe.Resource:

class Main {
  static function main() {
    var bytes = haxe.Resource.getBytes("welcome");
    trace(bytes.readString(0, bytes.length));
  }
}

The return type of getBytes method is haxe.io.Bytes, which is an object providing access to individual bytes of the data.

8.4.4 Implementation details

Haxe uses the target platform's native resource embedding if there is one, otherwise it provides its own implementation.

• Flash resources are embedded as ByteArray definitions
• C# resources are included in the compiled assembly
• Java resources are packed in the resulting JAR file
• C++ resources are stored in global byte array constants.
• JavaScript resources are serialized in Haxe serialization format and stored in a static field of haxe.Resource class.
• Neko resources are stored as strings in a static field of haxe.Resource class.