Programming Flash Communication Server

This is the Title of the Book, eMatter Edition

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

Testing and Debugging Network Connections

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93

Multiple Simultaneous NetConnection

Objects

Macromedia recommends against making multiple connections from a single Flash

movie to a FlashCom Server or Servers at the same time. First of all, each server can

handle only so many simultaneous connections and the data transfer overhead that

goes with them. Furthermore, FlashCom is licensed by the number of simultaneous

connections. Therefore, whenever possible, avoid designing communication applica-

tions that require multiple simultaneous connections. However, a Flash movie can

connect simultaneously to different applications or different instances of the same

application; it can also connect multiple times to the same application instance, if

necessary. This is an especially useful feature when testing applications and in devel-

oping larger scale multi-instance applications.

The simple test script in Example 3-7 makes two connections to the same chat room

instance.

Assuming there are no problems with the network or server, the trace output from

this test will look like this:

First connection: NetConnection.Connect.Success

Second connection: NetConnection.Connect.Success

Multiple connections are useful when debugging, the topic of the next section.

Testing and Debugging Network

Connections

Networked applications present some additional difficulties when testing or debug-

ging programs, as more than one system is always involved. A connection attempt

may fail for many reasons, including the following:

• The target URI may be incorrect (watch for typos).

• A username or password may be wrong.

Example 3-7. Using more than one NetConnection object

NetConnection.prototype.onStatus = function (info) {

trace(this.name + ": " + info.code);

};

nc1 = new NetConnection( );

nc1.name = "First connection";

nc2 = new NetConnection( );

nc2.name = "Second connection";

nc1.connect("rtmp:/testChat/room1", "Guest", "Guest");

nc2.connect("rtmp:/testChat/room1", "Guest", "Guest");