Building Data-driven Flash Applications

Top notch Internet development demands data-driven applications, and for Flash-based deployments, deciding the best way to approach the challenge it’s not always an easy task. This session explains the many ways Flash can consume and process data from external sources, using techniques available within the tool itself and a little bit of creativity. From FlashVars to XML and Web services, you will be taken through different situations, trying to define the criteria that should drive your decision, according to your needs and your available resources.

Although some code will be shown, this presentation is intended to be mostly informative rather than hands-on. Our objective here is to examine the advantages and disadvantages of choosing one technique over another. As in other development arenas, an increasing complexity on a Flash application or system will eventually lead us to decide trade-offs in order to deliver a product that corresponds to its unique situation in an efficient manner. That's why we need to take a look at the big picture.

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Download files by clicking here. Zip file contains:

Presentation
- Flash presentation (presentation.exe)
- Original Powerpoint presentation, with notes (dynamicdata.ppt)

Example 1 - VINY Portfolio
- Custom XML Deserializer for VINY Portfolio (example1/portfolio.as)
- Sample XML document for VINY Portfolio (example1/portfolio.xml)
- Generic XML Deserializer (example1/xml_deserializer.as)

Example 2 - FullAsAGoog web service
- Unfortunately the source for this example cannot be distributed as it makes use of the WebService Classes, which are part of Flash MX Professional 2004.

Resources mentioned during the session:

- Macromedia Flash Remoting
- AMFPHP
- NuSOAP
- FLAP

Related Topics at Macromedia's Flash Developer Center:

- Data Integration Resources (Flash MX 2004)
- Getting a Handle on Web Services in Macromedia Flash MX Professional 2004
- Choosing Between XML, Web Services, and Remoting for Rich Internet Applications
- Connecting Macromedia Flash and PHP