This is a very importat thing to know when you are about to design Flash forms, or any application that needs to manage data such as an highscore table.
This is a standalone tutorial, but the basics explained will be useful in the Creation of a Flash highscores API course.
The only method we need to know is sendAndLoad
Let’s dive into an example: I created an input text area called input_text
, a button called send_button
and a dynamic text called result_text
.
Now, look at the code:
var php_process:LoadVars = new LoadVars();
send_button.onRelease = function() {
var post_variable:LoadVars = new LoadVars();
post_variable.string = input_text.text;
post_variable.sendAndLoad("http://www.emanueleferonato.com/downloads/sendtest.php",php_process,"POST");
};
php_process.onLoad = function(success:Boolean) {
if (success) {
result_text.text = php_process.result;
}
else {
result_text.text = "Error connecting to server.";
}
};
Line 1: Declaring a variable called php_process
as LoadVars
The LoadVars
class is useful for transferring variables between a Flash application and a server (who said “like an highscore”?)
Line 2: Beginning of the function to be executed when the send_button
button has been pressed
Line 3: Declaring another LoadVars
variable called post_variable
Line 4: Setting the string
attribute of the post_variable
as the content of the input_text
dynamic text area
Line 5: Using sendAndLoad to pass post_variable
to a script on the server at the address http://www.emanueleferonato.com/downloads/sendtest.php
using the POST
method and saving the result in the php_process
variable
Line 7: Beginning of the function to be executed when the php_process has been loaded (when the server replied). Notice the success
boolean flag
Lines 8-10: If success
is true
(I communicated with the server), then display in the result_test
dynamic text area the result
variable of php_process
. We’ll see how to get the result
variable when we’ll examine the php script
Lines 11-13: Dispaying an error if I wasn’t able to communicate with the server
Now, let’s see the php script in the
http://www.emanueleferonato.com/downloads/sendtest.php
page
Line 3: If the string
variable passed with POST
method contains something…
Line 4: Convert the string to uppercase, just to do something…
Line 5: writing the content of the result
variable as the uppercased value of the initial string
Lines 7-9: if the string
variable passed with POST
does not contain anything, then writing the content of the result variable as a message saying you did not write anything.
And that’s it… play with it and give me feedback
Write something in the upper text area and press “send”