Programming Flash Communication Server

This is the Title of the Book, eMatter Edition

Copyright © 2007 O’Reilly & Associates, Inc. All rights reserved.

Summary of Communication Components

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application on the FlashCom Server. For production-ready applications, though,

you should use a full RTMP URI, such as rtmp://

fcs.mydomain.com/app, where

fcs.mydomain.com is the name of the server where FlashCom is running, and app

is the name of the application folder. This parameter corresponds to the

appDirectory property.

Communication Components

A list of other communication component instance names. If you double-click

this parameter in the Properties panel, you can enter multiple instance names of

other communication components that coexist on stage with the SimpleCon-

nect component. When the SimpleConnect instance connects to a FlashCom

application, it shares its connection with the objects specified in the Communi-

cation Components list. You can directly manipulate this listener list using the

fcComponents property (an array).

You can create your own custom objects that can be recognized by the SimpleCon-

nect component. Simply create a connect( ) method for your object, and specify the

object’s name in the Communication Components list. Your object should be instan-

tiated on the parent timeline of the SimpleConnect instance.

How the component works

The SimpleConnect component connects a Flash movie to a FlashCom application

by invoking a client-side NetConnection.connect( ) method as soon as the instance

loads in the movie. The SimpleConnect component actually tries to connect with

both a standard RTMP and a tunneling RTMPT connection. Whichever connection

type responds first becomes the active URI of the connection. The connection is then

shared with the objects specified in the Communication Components parameter

(

fcComponents property) of the SimpleConnect instance.

When the user enters a name and clicks the Login button (or presses the Enter key),

the SimpleConnect component issues a NetConnection.call( ) method to the server-

side FCSimpleConnect.changeName( ) method. This method keeps track of the user’s

name, as entered in the SimpleConnect’s text field, and shares that data with other

communication components.

Because the SimpleConnect component doesn’t support common features, such as

entering a password in addition to a username, you may want to create a connection

manually as part of a custom login. The manual approach requires you to notify

other components of the connection’s status as discussed under “Forgoing the Sim-

pleConnect Component” at the end of this chapter.

UserColor

The UserColor component is a UI element that allows each user to choose a color to

represent her identity within the Chat and Cursor components. The UI of the