HTTPService/HTTPMultiService have a cool concept of a Serialization Filter. This mechanism let’s you configure and manipulate various aspects of the HTTP call like the request, response, etc..
A default implementation of SerializationFilter is provided in mx.rpc.http.SerializationFilter
Usage –
You can create a custom SerializationFilter by extending from the default implementation and set it on the HTTPService instance or the Operation instance.
A sample implementation can be as simple as processing the response from the service.
For example, if your service returns a comma (,) separated list of values, you can convert it to an Array here.
package { import mx.rpc.http.AbstractOperation; import mx.rpc.http.SerializationFilter; public class CustomSerializationFilter extends SerializationFilter { override public function deserializeResult (operation:AbstractOperation, result:Object):Object { var arr:Array = []; if (result is String) { arr = String(result).split(','); } return arr; } } }
And no, this is not all, there are other methods also which exposes more functionality.
For example, you can use the serializeURL() method to process/modify the url which this service/operation is about to invoke.
Livedocs here