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Flash Reference Guide

Aug 22, 2003

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If the truth be known, when you begin building an application you should have a good understanding of how that application works. Whether that is through flow charts, a document or (and this happens more than it should) in your head. Have the conceptual view really can free up your time for building a solution.

For a simple application like the chat room application you are going to create I would start developing on the server.

Server Admin

If you remember in your server setup the Flash MX Communication Server runs differently to a web server. To begin with, you are not broadcasting across the Web Standard HTTP protocol. You will be using RDMS. Setting up the server in this instance is then different. The file structure is not hosted within the InetPubs directory as web applications are with Microsofts Internet Information Server or within the HTDOCS directory as web pages are with Apache. The windows version of Communication Server stores if files within the Flash MX 2004 Communications folder on your hard drive.

You can find the directory at C:\program files\macromedia\flash communication server mx\applications

Opening this folder with show you all of the applications you have installed on your computer. These collections of files are a great place to learn some of the more complication solutions Flash Communication Server provides.

You can see the performance of any of these applications by running the diagnostic tools for Flash Communication Server.

Go to Start→Macromedia→Communication Server→Administration Console
This will open the Administration Web Window. Select the Communication App Inspector. You will find it within the Server Tools selection in the left hand navigation.
Enter you name and password.
You will not see any applications running at first. To see the applications running you will need load an application.
In the load application section write tutorial_textchat and select load. This loads the tutorial_textchat application so you can monitor it.
Now whenever you run the application or someone uses it you will see the application running.

Now that you have seen how you can monitor existing applications lets go ahead and create your first application so you can see how you can build your own solutions.

You will need to go back to C:\program files\macromedia\flash communication server mx\applications and create a new folder to host your application. A simple rule you need to keep in mind when you are creating folders for Flash Communication Server MX applications is that all folder names and file names can have no spaces. This is because you will be referencing the folder from your ActionScript.
Create a folder and call it myChat.
Open the myChat folder. Open a text editor such as Notepad. Write the following ActionScript: application.onAppStart = function()
Save the file as main.asc. The main.asc is a special file. It is the core file for your applications and the one Communication Server will use to execute your code. This one of code will enable Flash Communication Server to communicate between the Communication Components you will add to the Stage.
You can now test to see if the file is successfully installed. Go to Start→Macromedia→Communication Server→Administration Console and launch the Communication App Inspector. At the bottom of the screen locate the field where you can load an application. Type in myChat and select the load button. This will load the application allowing you to monitor it.

At this point you have built the application that will run on your server, but you have not create the Flash Movie that will interface with it. The flash Movie is the second part to the chicken and the egg riddle.

Rights Access

So far you have built a simple application. But what if you want to restrict access to the application. This can be done a number of ways.

The easiest way is to bar the user from accessing the application through your web page. There are many ways you can do this. For Windows 2003 you can use PassPort Security, Forms Based Security or Windows own security. For Linux and Unix you can use Forms and LDAP security. ColdFusion itself comes with a very intelligent set of wrappers that enable you to connect to an LDAP authentication.

The first place you want to add your security must always be with the server.

The next lever you can add security is within your Flash Communication Server Application. For instance, the following looks to see who is logging into the server. Depending on who they are returns three different results:

application.onConnect = function (clientObj, name)
{
  clientObj.ID = name;
  if( name == admin) {
  trace( You are the administration and will be able to add Editors to the Chat Room );
  } else if (name == editor) {
    application.rejectConnection(clientObj);
    trace( You are an editor will be able to edit this application );
  } else {
    application.acceptConnection(clientObj);
    trace( Welcome to the Chat Room );
  }
}

This Server Side ActionScript will only be triggered when a user attempts to connect to the Application.

You can take the authentication and security even further by using Flash Remoting or Web Services within the Flash Movie to connect with a Database to authenticate a user.

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