Programming Flash Communication Server

This is the Title of the Book, eMatter Edition

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

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Chapter 3

CHAPTER 3

Managing Connections

Before a Flash movie can exchange audio, video, and other data with a FlashCom

Server application, it must request a network connection to the server. If an applica-

tion instance on the server accepts the connection request, a TCP connection is made

available to both the movie and application instance to use for ongoing communica-

tions. We saw in the preceding chapter that the SimpleConnect component can cre-

ate a connection. This chapter covers connections in more depth, including how to

write custom code to handle various changes in the connection status as well as dif-

ferent error types.

A network connection can be managed within a Flash movie using a NetConnection

object. This object’s methods are used to request, close, and monitor the status of a

network connection. The SharedObject and NetStream classes, as well as Macrome-

dia’s communication components, all depend on access to a NetConnection object in

order to communicate with the FlashCom Server.

Making a Connection

NetConnection objects are created by calling the NetConnection( ) constructor func-

tion:

lobby_nc = new NetConnection( );

In this example, the lobby_nc variable stores a NetConnection object, which can be

used to attempt to connect to an application instance:

if (lobby_nc.connect("rtmp:/testLobby", userName, password)) {

trace("Attempting connection...");

}

else {

trace("Can't attempt connection. Is the URI correct?");

}

In this example, the URI rtmp:/testLobby is the address of an instance of an applica-

tion named testLobby that resides on the server from which the movie was

downloaded. The connect( ) method is always passed the URI of the application