Hi everybody, I want to put my head through a wall right now so I figured I'd break down and ask for help before I replace my forehead with a dent. I was wondering if anybody knew of Coldfusion 8 + Flash tutorials or sites. I can't seem to find anything that have info on mixing the two products.

I'm normally a Flash guy and have no CF experience. I have downloaded a couple example applications but they don't seem to work. I don't know if my browser is preventing Flash from communicating on a local server or if the two technologies just aren't communicating like they should. Somebody help. I'll learn everything myself and don't need a quick fix answer but if you want to join in maybe I can throw you some money. It's a contracted project. Let me know what you think.

Thanks for the help.

Bo

[ServerSide]

Hey Bo,

What are you trying to accomplish with CF? The integration with Flash is pretty tight so you shouldn't be having too much trouble combining the two technologies. If you can let me know what you're trying to accomplish I might be able to help you out with some examples or at least point you in the right direction.

[biggetybo]

Ok, so here's where I'm at so far. I'm creating a Coldfusion Slideshow with Flash. The requirement is the Coldfusion variables have to be inserted into Flash for things like SlideViewTime, SlideFadeTime, URL, Dir, etc. It looks like I have to use a CFOUTPUT tag to echo(php term, which i'm used to) the vars to Flash. However, I've found an example where i can use CF param(I think) to declare the variable and then use EMBED src and a query string like demo.swf?variable=myVariable&variable2=myVariable2. Then, in Flash, I just have a dynamic text field that prints the variables. How can I get those CFOUTPUT tag variables to Flash?

I hope that isn't too technical. It sounds like it is. Let me know if you need more info. I appreciate the help.

Bo

[ServerSide]

Ok, if it's a slideshow that you're creating the easiest thing for you to do IMO is have CF dynamically generate XML for you to use in Flash. This way you can store your data in an Array instead of having a bunch of variables which is much more manageable for a slideshow. You didn't say but I'm assuming that you are planning on storing your slideshow information in a database?

I put together an example for you but there are a couple of things you'll need to do to get it to work. Assuming you've got ColdFusion set up already, you'll need to set up a datasource called "SlideShow" in your CF Administrator that points to the "slideshow.mdb" Access db file I included. Then update the URL in Flash to point to the "slideshow.cfm" file once you copy it to your wwwroot or inetpub folder depending on which web server you are using.

When you test the movie in Flash you'll see all of the information that is stored in the slideshow table of the database listed neatly in the output panel. If you know your way around Flash then you should have no problem turning the results into whatever type of slideshow you want.

If you need more or less fields in each record you can modify the db, .cfm, and .fla accordingly.

Let me know if you have any problems getting it to work or if you have any other questions

Attached Files

CF_XML_example.zip (32.8 KB, 3 views)