Tutorials Home What's New Top Rated Submit myTutes Random!

Proxy Scripting in Flash - Loading External Data
Author: Jeffrey F. Hill | Website: http://www.flash-db.com |

Page 2
«prev 1 2 3 4 next»

Part I: Building Static Requests

To include a text file, html file, XML file, etc from a different server/domain - only a simple script is needed. In the Flash movie you would have something like this:

loadVariablesNum("GetFile.php",0);

You would also have a dynamic text box named 'Results'. After calling the script this text area would be populated with the information at the URL your requesting. Here's the script:

<?php
1)  $URL = "http://www.somesite.com/Data.txt";
2)  $fp = fopen( $URL,"r");
3)  $Results = fread($fp, 800000);
4)  fclose( $fp );
5)  print "Results=$Results";
?>

What this does:

Line 1: First we specify a URL to open.

Line 2: We open and assign the URL to a file pointer ($fp).

Line 3: Reads the data contained at that URL and gives it a variable name of $Results. In this case their is a limit of 800000 (which is big enough for almost anything).

Line 4: Closes the file pointer.

Line 5: Prints the results to the page. The format of 'Variable=Value' is needed so that flash can read in the data. At this point the data is sent back to Flash - and will appear in the text area named 'Results'.

You can use this same method with an XML file using the XMLSocket Object's methods and the XML Object's send and sendAndLoad - The concept is the same - although the format and method that Flash calls the file would be different.

To have this working with XML - I would recommend looking over one of the many XML tutorials out their and combining the idea's contained on those tutorials with this Tutorial. In this fashion loading XML content from external servers/domains is possible - and relatively easy.

The URL can be any type of file including .html, .csv, .txt, .tsv, RSS, WDDX, etc. You can also load mp3's, images, other swf's, movies, etc from other servers with that above script (with MX)- however you would use LoadMovie instead of LoadVariables, and because LoadMovie does not have the same restrictions as LoadVariables - it would not be necessary to use the script.

«prev 1 2 3 4 next»

» Level Advanced

Added: : 2002-04-05 Rating: 7.08 Votes: 27 Hits: 1740

» Author

Jeffrey Hill is a freelance web developer from Boulder, Colorado. He specializes in creating and developing dynamic database driven Flash content, applications, and content management systems. Specialty's include SQL, PHP, Perl, and XML.

» Download

Download the files used in this tutorial.

Download (18 kb)

Get conversion and unzipping tools for PC and Mac here!

» Forums
	More help? Search our boards for quick answers!

Please rate this tutorial, 10 is the top rating, you can also click the comments link to read/write a review.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1