Preserved Topic: Flash Dribble

Hey, wanted to mention this : http://www.tryptych.net/idleplay/flash/dribble/ Mah first Flash/PHP combo.

Probably the coolest thing about it is being able to detect when data has finished loading. The onClipEvent(data) triggers when it has, finding the current frame in a looping MC and playing it to the end, revealing the interface and data etc. It also makes use of a pretty nifty (and universal) search and replace function that can be found here. Well Worth checking out.

Anyways I think this works pretty well, this is a version one so there may still be some issuses. If you break it, try and remember how. =)

All the files (.fla, .txt, .php) are in the zip (on that page) if you want to play with or use it.

Weadz (Cheers)

WOW!
the flash itself works fantastic!

the graphics, details, ... im a bit disappointed weadz.

btw: what happened to your frontpage?

Weadah Jones, you hot rip.

That is some slick piece. Oh yeah. I'm sittin' here with big eyes!

Hot? Rip? hahaha well okay =)
Hey I slept for ten hours solid. The second thing I thought of when I woke was how cool onClipEvent(data) is hahaha.

I prolly shoulda said in mi first post - this isnt really a page for visitors, just a page where those who ask about dribble can demo/grab it. It's raw as, so from here it can be skinned to suit the application, added to, changed whatever. I'll take the advice left and swish-up the arrows, text fields ...FnR "Message".

Steve : An edit message feature would be pretty hard to implement. Dribbles are stored in a textfile, and theres no logging features at all, not even IP's, so I am thinking prolly not with this version. Tho, if features like that were needed, using cookies and SQL would make it possible..... mmmm

Anyways, cheers again =)

Weadz

Oh Grumble! - New frontdoor, berry soon. Mebbe. =)

Is it fair to ask what the *first* think you thought of was?


No edit? No worries. Most people don't even read what they wrote anyway!

Steve - My first thought's always of mah baby.
My third thought is the one you don't wanna know about... hah har! =)

Weadz (sweetah than summer whine)

Very cool weadz....

I've been planning on getting stuck into flash ove the x-mas break so expect this forum to be a little more active soon eh.

I was also planning on seeing how well PHP & MySQL could interact with Flash, If I ever get stuck I'll know where to look.

Personally, I'm looking forward to using PNG images. Transparency channels in a bitmap, on the web... I'll take twenty of em!

Thanks man =) Hey, PNG's are a god send yah. hehe I smile every time I use one for blending. Really, I doubt I'll worry much about dhtml any more. Little things like that make it so worth while.

Anyways, Flash has getURL, loadVars, loadVarsNum... a buncha XML socket thingies that I'm yet to explore, but did see a real time chat app the other day making use of them so its all possible. Actually, PHP will create a .swf on the fly (eg: post SQL) which can then be fed into whatever's on the stage, so theres a buncha ways to approach any problem. Oh and javascript too I guess, Flash n JS get on pretty well.

Its prolly news to me only, but the thing I'm liking right now is this not having to leave or change the environment to get new data into it. Not only external movies but real time stuff too, from a database say, and the ease of doing so/checking for/using it. This stuff can be done with dhtml, but Flash is so fast and tidy.

Just as an example - I wrote a PHP script that does a tour of Australian weather bureaus and nabs the relevant temperature info. This works by shunting the content thru a hidden iFrame and some JS that fills a < div > with the output. I'm thinkin I'd like a cool map of Aus with hotspots on it. OnClick, grab the weather for that location and present it. Its a much easier thing to do with Flash... The call to get the info and return it somewhere is two lines of code... very portable too - one .swf and a PHP script.

Weadz (Can ya tell Im a bit into this?)



[This message has been edited by Weadah (edited 10-29-2001).]

The poster has demanded we remove all his contributions, less he takes legal action.
We have done so.
Now Tyberius Prime expects him to start complaining that we removed his 'free speech' since this message will replace all of his posts, past and future.
Don't follow his example - seek real life help first.

Wead;

I was looking for something in the Moock book and stumbled across something you might find useful. He calls it an undocumented feature: the "_changed" event. Kicks in whenever user adds to or deletes from a user input text field.

Pretty much straight frome the book:

- create an input text field
- Name the text field (something like "myField")
- on the same timeline, create a frame label: "myField_changed"
- Attach whatever code you want to this frame - maybe test by using: trace("something changed");
- test the movie. Type something in the input field - the code in the labled frame will execute.

(Of course you can name the input field anything you want, but the frame lable has to have the same name.)

Moock notes that using ActionScript to set the value for the inoput field won't supply the trigger for this event - only user keystrokes trigger "_changed".

Wow. Pretty amazing potential here for dribbles maybe - it's aware of text being entered into the fields!

I haven't played with this. Seemed like it might be useful tho.

Using undocumented features may cause serious peoblems with future versions of flash. It's not documented so it's not really an offical part of action script, Macromedia could change the way this works, or remove it completly from the Flash 6 Plugin. Which would cause all sorts of problems in the future.

Then again, they might not.

awesome site wedah! I dig the hybrid of flash & PHP.

Hey wedah, can't seem to get it to work. Is there anything that i need to modify? I would thing that there is something in the PHP that needs to changed, maybe like a URL to sumit the content to? I haven't clue. Looked through the fla. and I only see some frame script of about 4 lines, do I need to asign a action script tp the submit nutton in flash with the URL where the content will show up? If so where? I'm sure you didn't intend for there is be any problems, but I've been working with flash for only 3 month now and I have never worked with PHP before.

I also noticed this "display_dribble.swf" What is that line for? Don't you usually just give the name of the movie? Like this "dribble.swf" ??? I didn't put that in my code, do I need to?

:: Jon ::



[This message has been edited by Dark (edited 11-01-2001).]

Does anyone know how to configure this?

:: Sorry to post three times in a row ::

Wooo! Well that was the week from hell. Really, just, awful, just plain bad. Okee cool,

Dark - I dumped the contents of that zip into a folder and fired it up - she worky very goodly, so I am thinkin you haven't set file permission?s correctly (or at all) on the text file. That *must* be chmoded to 766 else you will get nothing back in flash. To test if the script is working on your server - enter the URL of the PHP file in your address bar (yoursite.com/dribble.php) with no queries "?"'s - it should output the contents of the text file, if any. It says this in the top line of the PHP file btw, guess I should add some kinda wead-me to the zip. hehe.

InI - Thanks man, I hack stuff together, sloppy but it works. Some of TrypTychs JS is stuff borrowed from Doc then crunched to fit the situation. If it works I'm happy. This is another attraction to Flash, creation is fast, that?s important, get the shit out there and move on. I think with all mi DHTML stuff, way more time has been spent arguing with 12 outa 27 versions of Netscape than it was in the actual creation, the fun bit.

You are correct tho and I was being a bit flippant with DHTML. Every thing in its place, tools are tools. A hammer rarely makes a good screwdriver tho. By DHTML I mean pretty much anything that moves, needs dragging, animates, is a menu system and all that whizz bangaree stuff - I am now seeing as jobs for Flash.
A 15 frame gif (or JS) animation is no match for 15 frames of Flash. But,... JS, CSS, HTML, PHP, Perl etc etc certainly do have their place in design, Flash on it's own doesn't do everything.

For me right now those elements will be supporting/presenting/backending/holding up mostly Flash frontends I think. The design is what matters. Content is still King. Stability of the presentation, fast fun creation, these are things that interest me.
http://www.tryptych.net/idleplay/flash/weathered/

=)

Steve - Man thanks so much for that, I haven?t had a chance to get this working yet but that?s just the ticket. An onFocus type event for text fields is a toy in itself heh, thanks a bunch, most appreciated. Dribble is now like 130px wide (with the form layered on top) so a version 2 will be available (including a _changed event for fields) as soon as I get a chance.

Weadz

"wead-me"



Har!

God, I love reading your posts almost as much as I love looking at your art.

Are you recovered from your terrible week?

This dribble thing is just an awesome tool. Really.

Ooops. I went to the "weathered" page. I was blown away. I wrote a message to that effect and got the dreaded "A script is causing"..., whatever that message says when a script goes into a terminal loop.

Is it my pokey old home computer? What sort of non-ending loop could you have in there?

Anyway, before it turned out that I culdn't leave a message, what I had been in the process of saying was - Oh dear Lord! Stunning, both visually and technically. Really. You think you could get together with Mr. Max and his Asylum Locator so that we could know both where folks were and if it was raining on them?

And just to keep everything joined up - Weadah has posted his weather page for review here:
www.ozoneasylum.com/Forum6/HTML/000700.html

Emps


You're my wife now Dave

quote:

---

That *must* be chmoded to 766 else you will get nothing back in flash

---

Im sorry wedah, what does chmoded mean? where can i do this and how?
You can e-mail me or jsut post it here.

Dark:
chmod = unix for change/modify.

Used to allow various permissions on a unix (apache) based web server.

David Eisenberg writes in a very reader-friendly style. I've recently become a *big* fan of his! He has a nice tutorial on chmod here.

Otherwise, search the 'net. If you are interested in CGI, PHP, PERL or pretty much *ANY* back-end scripting, chmod is going to have to be familiar to you. Many FTP software tools will allow you to make chmod commands.

[This message has been edited by Steve (edited 11-04-2001).]

It worked perfect with me!

I was messin with it, change colors, shape and a lot of stuff, and it works cool!! (Even when it looks horrible!! hehehe)


Very good man!! even, I hope you don't care, there was this boy searching for something similar on a spanish forum, and i gave it to him, he said 'said thanks to Weadah!' )

Hey steve so do I just chmod the text file? I mean just put in those lines of code? I looked through that site and I understand what it all does, but I can't believe that I can just stick it in the txt file. All this does is given whoever views the page "read" only access to the txt file right? So whatever is in the txt file will show up. and then when somone posts a message it will go directly into the txt file via PHP script? I'm not sure how you put the code in the txt file. Im slow, but getting there.

Also who do I set the file permissions? It talks about certain users?


[This message has been edited by Dark (edited 11-05-2001).]

Gulp. Confession - I haven't tried this on Wead's thingie. You don't really put permissions "in" the .txt file - you address the file on the server with your FTP client and send instruction using that FTP software. Putting the instructions in the text file won't do anything.

But ...... I'm no unix server god. Someone other that me needs to field this question.

Please????

Ok I was running on angelfire untill just now. I just got a server that has FTP access and I got a pretty nice FTP program. I found a file that says "chmod" in the server directory. Do I need to modify "this" file?

[This message has been edited by Dark (edited 11-06-2001).]

Outstanding, Weadz. You never cease to freak me out.

sorry, my drool cup overfloweth..



Everybody has the right to no taste

Ahh Bob thankyou - freaking you out is a prime motivation =)

Dark - I dont know, but I reckon you prolly wont have any luck running it at AngelFire. Unless things have changed and they may have, AF don't allow users access to PHP, but if they do, you still need to set the permissions via FTP, Telnet or mebbe they have some kinda control panel thingy..

Anyways do some reading on what each setting does and means, The numbers (766 in this case) are just shorthand for giving the Read/Write/Execute for each group.

Actually, if you want to play with this stuff (php n flash not permissions) and/or cant find a host - go here and get thier webserver, install it on your windows box. This is will give you PHP and a funkay envirnment to play in. Well Worth it.

Ed - Steve! Yes, I think all calls to the server should have a timer attached that either returns a msg to the textfield or tries the script again... or both? Anyways if that happens alot then something's not right, but things do seem ok for now. Chances are its nothing major, I was toying in that folder for a while after I posted the link. And thanks again!

Weadz




[This message has been edited by Weadah (edited 11-06-2001).]

yeah weed that weather map
thats the best use of media ive ever seen
that leave comments is bad ass also.....

Wedah I jsut got, Hosted by ensim! So now I have a UNIX apache server. I saw the panel that said file permissions and saw the read/write/execute options for admin and for users. hehe! so all I needed to do was click the the files and then turn on the write? Cause excute and read were default settings. I guess I don't need to use FTP now that I have admin options on my own part of server Thanks for your help! It all should work fine now.

[This message has been edited by Dark (edited 11-07-2001).]

Ok, changed the file permissons and I when I fired up the site the flash loaded and I saw your post wedah and [anon] but it doesn't show my posts untill i post again, then when i refresh it loses it. I have the txt file set to write/read/excute should all three be set?

The poster has demanded we remove all his contributions, less he takes legal action.
We have done so.
Now Tyberius Prime expects him to start complaining that we removed his 'free speech' since this message will replace all of his posts, past and future.
Don't follow his example - seek real life help first.

I fixed it! wahoo! I didn't need to have the excute option on just write and read for the users. thank you all for helping with this! I love it wedah!

A link won't help, this is the script, but it outputs like this :

Opens file, reads it, sorts it thru an array, adds the new message from Flash to the top, returns the output to flash, then writes the file and exits.

The sequence is so flash isn't waiting on the file, plus it saves me opening/reading it twice n stuff lalala SO! Anyways - Set the perms on the text file ONLY (no other files just the .txt) to :

Owner : (7) - R,W,E
Group : (6) - R,W
Public : (6) - R,W

And all should be well I'd wager.

Weadz

Hahah a minute too late, oh well heeh glad you got it working man =)

And hey thanks muchly Krypton! High praise man. You're welcome to use the comments thing, dribble link above. Cheers.

Weadz

haha! thanks wedah. I learned alot today about php and how to set file permissions on a UNIX server


<EDIT>btw- to change the font color of the posts you edit the php file right?</EDIT>


[This message has been edited by Dark (edited 11-07-2001).]

Hey Wead, One question.

Everything seems to be working fine with My Dribble, but when I enter a message it goes into the dribble, bt when I refresh it, It all disappears. Everytime I refresh it, It comes up with the first 2 messages that were packaged with it. When I enter another message I see all the messages that I entered before. Check Mine out and see if you can figure it out

P.S. - my permissions are set like this :
dribble.html = 644
dribble.php = 644
dribble.swf = 644
dribbles.txt = 766

Thanks.

Hey I checked it out just b4 man, left a few dribbles which were there on return so I'm thinkin all is well now yah?

Weadz

Hey Weadz, I saw your dribble. But when I replyed mine was not there when I refreshed! This is so weird!

Does this have anything to do with cookies?



[This message has been edited by Skatefx (edited 11-14-2001).]

It's all done with the file permissions. I had the same problem and I played with the file permissons leaving excute off on all of them and I finally got it to allow me to post and keep it on there after a refresh. Like wedah sadi you can type in the full path of the file and like www.yoursite.com/dribble.php and it should dump the contents on the txt file. If it doesn't dump your post then maybe you don't have the write function set on all the files right. I had problems with losing my post on refresh then losing the public post on refresh. All works fine now though, so I must have done something correct. Far as I can see this has nothing to do with cookies.

:: Jon ::


D a r k

OMG I swear I have tryed everything. It still refuses to work.

Dark - What are your permissions set to?

Yah. Well. I *think* this is a feature of certain (Windows?) servers, or builds of PHP... or IE or something. It can?t it just can't be me right? heheh uugh.

The .txt file is being cached, then not updated after each call, cuz when compared to the local copy for all intents its the same file. Things do work like they should :

http://www.skatefx.com/Phase2/dribble/dribble.php?msg=test-from-source-by-weadz
clicking ^ that adds "[Anon] test-from-source-by-weadz" to the file.

http://www.skatefx.com/Phase2/dribble/dribble.php
http://www.skatefx.com/Phase2/dribble/dribbles.txt
Check it by reloading either of those - "[Anon] test-from-source-by-weadz" appears, so yup no worries.

http://www.skatefx.com/Phase2/dribble/dribble.swf
Testing it from here, all is good but reload it and an older text file appears.

Clean out your temp-net files and reload the page (or .swf) - now it shows the updated file
... which is pretty sad.

Fwiw - the textFile isn?t called by .swf - (SWF -> PHP (nabs the file) -> SWF). And I think that?s where its getting stuck. An all round fix would be to compare the datestamp and/or have a script that deals with view and another to handle the writing process...which is prolly how it shoulda worked in the first place.

I don?t have a box where I can test it but a simple fix might be to rename the .txt to .php (and the call in the script - $TheDribbleFile="dribbles.txt"; <-.php - and see how your server deals with that. It's still the same file (containing dribbles) but may not be handled the same way. (I am guessing)

Another thing might be to query the .php (previously the .txt file) with some random crap, but again not sure. I tried this just now and it worked, but, well it worked ok before. =\

Actually. You *could* goto like hotscripts n score a decent (read : well written) chat app - mebbe one that uses SQL.

The only interesting part of dribble is that one movie clip called 'response'.
About 3 frames into it there's a line that looks like - getVariables('something.php').

That could call anything you like really - so long as the output begins with '_root.dribtext.textField.textField=' dribble.swf will behave the same way - the text field, on receiving data will play the 'response' clip to its final frame (where the triggers for display are). So.... mebbe that?s an option.

I learnt this from moocks site and his tute on flatfile database's . Both are well worth a look.

Cheers for bringing this up too, its a headfuck but you've found a pretty nifty issue. I'll look/ask around n see what I can find. If you fix it lemme know man, cheers again

Weadz


[This message has been edited by Weadah (edited 11-15-2001).]

The poster has demanded we remove all his contributions, less he takes legal action.
We have done so.
Now Tyberius Prime expects him to start complaining that we removed his 'free speech' since this message will replace all of his posts, past and future.
Don't follow his example - seek real life help first.

InI - Where does that snippet of code go?

The poster has demanded we remove all his contributions, less he takes legal action.
We have done so.
Now Tyberius Prime expects him to start complaining that we removed his 'free speech' since this message will replace all of his posts, past and future.
Don't follow his example - seek real life help first.

Nuts. Lost a post 'cause I typed the password wrong and lost the content.

Shoot. Here's the short version. I *finally* got the time to play with the dribble, and think maybe there's a small hitch in the URL part of the script. I doesn't work with my URL, and I'm guessing it's because my URL doesn't start with "www". For the time being I use space provided by my cable ISP. My URL begins "http://people.ne.mediaone......" - I think your script tries to build a URL from anything a user might type in, and therefore inserts a "www" by default. That prevents mine from working. Am I right? I haven't had time to deconstruct anything so I'm just guessing. Just a little flag here.

How did you lose a post because you didn't type in the correct password? I just press the back button on the browser and everything is still there?

Steve : Cheers again, right that's cool. I'm kinda slack. As you know. Heh I think a propah make Link from Nick looks like :

$web = preg_replace("/((http(s?):\/\/)

[This message has been edited by taxon (edited 11-18-2001).]

Hey taxon love the slimies! Didn't you have an angel one also?