Key to the Sheridan Interactive Multimedia program curriculum is teaching learners to build environments in which end users can communicate with each other. To do this, we need interfaces for input and display and we have to get data to and from the server. Think facebook, flickr, YouTube, etc.
Adobe Flash provides many communication classes and methods such as:
- User Interface Components:
- Button
- CheckBox and RadioButton (Check Box & Radio Button)
- ComboBox and List (Combo Box)
- TextArea, TextInput and Label (Text Area & Input)
- NumbericStepper and ScrollPane (Numeric Stepper & Scroll Pane)
- Slider and TileList (Tile List)
- DataGrid (Data Grid)
- navigateToURL to load a Web Page from Flash
- SharedObject to save a Flash “cookie”
- FlashVars & SWF Query String to pass variables into Flash
- ExternalInterface to call a function in Flash from JavaScript
- Loading a SWF with Loader and URLRequest
- FileReference to upload a local file to be used by flash
- URLLoader and URLVariables to retrieve text or server output
- XML to send and receive XML
- Web Services to connect to scripts on other servers
- Remoting to avoid serializing and deserializing data
Here are links to content examples from our curriculum for all of the above except Web Services and Remoting. The Sheridan lessons include more than the content – there are supporting lesson plans, definition documents, steps for building, supplementary links, reflection forms, and in class explanation, lab work, assignments, exams and final projects. If you are looking into schooling in multimedia, please visit the Sheridan Interactive Multimedia site for more information on our one year post grad program.
User Interface Components
Communication 1 – navigateToURL, SharedObject, FlashVars, ExternalInterface, Loader, URLRequest and FileReference
Communication 2 – URLLoader and URLVariables to get text or server script data (PHP, MySQL)
Although we recommend the Falcon Data Class for this type of connection
XML in Flash
Although we recommend the Falcon Data Class for this type of connection
Just did an update on the communication.zip file to put in the code that fixes the ExternalInterface for IE. The code was right in the sample html but an older version in the zip file. Sorry about that! It was quite the bug too – a double bug – a timing issue and you can’t name the functions in flash and javascript the same thing.
Thanks to Martin who let us know the code in the zip was not updated.
I can’t find the Communication2 file you refer to at http://imm.sheridanc.on.ca/code/communication2.html
Is there any chance this will be fixed? I can really use those files ^^
Thanx anyway for the great script
Steffy
Oops – sorry Steffy… just noticed your comment. The link was pointing to communication.zip instead of communication2.zip – and is fixed now on http://imm.sheridanc.on.ca/code/communication2.html.
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Nice review at Flash Enabled – thanks guys…
http://flashenabledblog.com/2008/06/11/article-source-sample-flash-as3-code-to-help-designers-and-developers-handle-data-and-communication/
how do we put a CheckBox in the DataGrid while loading its data from external XML?
cud u plz suggest!
thank you in advance!
You can use FalconProvider at http://falconflash.wordpress.com to get a DataProvider object from XML with a few lines of code.
Once you have a DataProvider, you can use the various methods of the DataProvider like addItem() or addItemAt() to add items or replaceItem() etc. You might want to do so in a loop that either loops through your XML or the DataProvider’s array.
I have never had to put checkboxes in datagrids. It is done with a custom CellRenerer class. I took a scan of the Web but after half an hour have not found an easy working model. http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flash/quickstart/datagrid_pt3/ is a good start. http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/webforums/forum/messageview.cfm?forumid=15&catid=665&threadid=1317199&enterthread=y has one but is a couple hundred lines of code