I'm looking for a direct way for server-side code to access a flash shared object. Obviously you can write some javascript that can read flash shared objects via ExternalInterface. But doing that requires a client code execution, and then a push of the shared object data back to the server-side code. This seems rather complicated.
So is there a way for asp.net, php, or any other server-side script to request the data in a flash shared object?
Hope this question makes sense. Thanks!
Flash is a client side runtime.
Therefore, you require some client side code execution to get the values out of it.
Javascript is as good an option as you'll get (without having the Flash app phone home itself).
Related
For manually testing an HTTP client in my application, I'd like to use a tool which starts an HTTP server my application can connect to and that lets me respond to request from my application manually. I'm basically looking for a tool with a GUI that lists all incoming requests and allows me to select a status code and type a response message. I've already tested the functionality with unit tests but I also want to verify it manually with no mocking etc.
Sounds simple but I didn't find such a tool. I've found some that can be scripted but no interactive one. Do you know one?
This can probably be written relatively easily by creating the Swing GUI dialog popup inside the servlet servicing methods. Have never seen Tomcat running this way but probably it would. Only, mind the server time out. It may be not long enough for you to make an input and require to be configured, also on the client side. Also, parallel calls will make multiple popups that may be difficult to respond but probably this is a single client app.
As a simplest solution, server GUI can be simply disposed after call and newly created as the next call arrives. This will make eveything indepenent on how servlet container is managing the servlets (does it stays, is it destroyed, maybe class is unloaded, who knows). Advanced solution could include the "server servlet" that would interact through its own JSP page but then it may be complex to update it when the new call arrives (unless maybe refresh periodically).
We have a flex application that connects to a proxy server which handles authentication. If the authentication has timeout out the proxy server returns a json formatted error string. What I would like to do is inspect every URLRequest response and check if there's an error message and display it in the flex client then redirect back to login screen.
So I'm wondering if its possible to create an event listener to all URLRequests in a global fashion. Without having to search through the project and add some method to each URLRequest. Any ideas if this is possible?
Unless you're only using one service, there is no way to set a global URLRequest handler. If I were you, I'd think more about architecting your application properly by using a delegate and always checking the result through a particular service which is used throughout the app.
J_A_X has some good suggestions, but I'd take it a bit farther. Let me make some assumptions based on the limited information you've provided.
The services are scattered all over your application means that they're actually embedded in multiple Views.
If your services can all be handled by the same handler, you notionally have one service, copied many times.
Despite what you see in the Adobe examples showing their new Service generation code, it's incredibly bad practice to call services directly from Views, in part because of the very problem you are seeing--you can wind up with lots of copies of the same service code littered all over your application.
Depending on how tightly interwoven your application is (believe me, I've inherited some pretty nasty stuff, so I know this might be easier said than done), you may find that the easiest thing is to remove all of those various services and replace them by having all your Views dispatch a bubbling event that gets caught at the top level. At the top level, you respond to that event by calling one instance of your service, which is again handled in one place.
You may or may not choose to wrap that single service in a delegate, but once you have your application archtected in a way where the service is decoupled from your Views, you can make that choice at any time.
Would you be able to extend the class and add an event listener in the object's constructor? I don't like this approach but it could work.
You would just have to search/replace the whole project.
We have a Flex application which relies heavily on data driven content supplied via asp.net. Currently the majority of this data is provided via asp.net objects which are then XML serialised and sent via a simple ASHX handler. This is then parsed via e4x in singleton classes to populate either its self or arrays of sub classes which are then available to the rest of the application without making additional data calls.
This works but is it the best way? I've read quite a few articles discussing the subject but couldn't really find any consensus.
Should I look into converting these to Web Services? If so, how should I manage the bindings, automatically import them via Flex or build my own? What are the pro's and con's. An important factor in this decision is speed, lowest latency and highest throughput is essential
As a separate matter our application doesn't sit at the root of the domain, and when in local development makes data calls to our development servers. As a result we add flash vars to the application to specify the appRoot which is then appended to the service url as necessary.
MyService.url = GeneralData.ApplicationRootUrl + "Services/foobar.ashx";
Is this the best way? I have since discovered the rootURL property, should I be using this, how does it work in this context? If I were to convert the services to web services how would I go about implementing the same functionality to allow local development?
Many thanks
This works but is it the best way?
Best is very subjective based on your situation. If at all possible, I would recommend you use an AMF gateway. That way your objects can immediately convert from server side objects (.NET Classes) to client side objects (AS3 classes). This is a big time savings because you don't have to manually create your XML on the back end, nor manually process it in the front end. Also the binary format of AMF is going to give much smaller packets than XML or a SOAP WebService would.
For .NET AMF options, I'd look into WebORB or FlourineFX
Flex Application is always loaded in browser, and you can use relative URL, so that your application will connect to same server from where it is loaded.
MyService.url = "/Services/foobar.ashx";
"/" will certainly append host where it came from. And it is always good practice to connect to same host where the flash is loaded from.
Secondly, SOAP web services use xml serialization, so if you use your handler to do e4x serialization or you use SOAP web service generator of Flash Builder, speed will be almost same. SOAP web service will certainly be little slower, but the difference will be in micro seconds to milli seconds.
However, with Web services, your development will speed improve as you will not have to create proxy classes.
I'm using shared objects for a chat application, but i want my red5 to monitor every string that comes in. how can i make sure that the client side won't be able to modify the shared objects ?
In my case the client side is written using adobe flash builder beta 2 (flex4)
thanks!
seems that i need to use registerSharedObjectSecurity
http://dl.fancycode.com/red5/api/org/red5/server/adapter/MultiThreadedApplicationAdapter.html#registerSharedObjectSecurity%28org.red5.server.api.so.ISharedObjectSecurity%29
to register a ISharedObjectSecurity class with restrictions to my shared object.
http://dl.fancycode.com/red5/api/org/red5/server/api/so/ISharedObjectSecurity.html
gonna post a full answer while i'll test it.
Other than using a web service, is there anyway to call a method in a web app from a windows application? Both run on the same machine.
I basically want to schedule a job to run a windows app which updates some file (for a bayesian spam filter), then I want to notify the web app to reload that file.
I know this can be done in other ways but I'm curious to know whether it's possible anyway.
You can make your windows app connect to the web app and do a GET in a page that responds by reloading your file, I don't think it is strictly necessary to use a web service. This way you can also make it happen from a web browser.
A Web Service is the "right" way if you want them to communicate directly. However, I've found it easier in some situations to coordinate via database records. For example, my web app has bulk email capability. To make it work, the web app just leaves a database record behind specifying the email to be sent. The WinApp scans periodically for these records and, when it finds one with an "unprocessed" status, it takes the appropriate action. This works like a charm for me in a very high volume environment.
You cannot quite do this in the other direction only because web apps don't generally sit around in a timing loop (there are ways around this but they aren't worth the effort). Thus, you'll require some type of initiating action to let the web app know when to reload the file. To do this, you could use the following code to do a GET on a page:
WebRequest wrContent = WebRequest.Create("http://www.yourUrl.com/yourpage.aspx");
Stream objStream = wrContent.GetResponse().GetResponseStream();
// I don't think you'll need the stream Reader but I include it for completeness
StreamReader objStreamReader = new StreamReader(objStream);
You'll then reload the file in the PageLoad method whenever this page is opened.
How is the web application loading the file? If you were using a dependency on the Cache object, then simply updating the file will invalidate the Cache entry, causing your code to reload that entry when it is found to be null (or based on the "invalidated" event).
Otherwise, I don't know how you would notify the application to update the file.
An ASP.NET application only exists as an instance to serve a request. This is why web services are an easy way to handle this - the application has been instantiated to serve the service request. If you could be sure the instance existed and got a handle to it, you could use remoting. But without having a concrete handle to an instance of the application, you can't invoke the method directly.
There's plenty of other ways to communicate. You could use a database or some other kind of list which both applications poll and update periodically. There are plenty of asynchronous MQ solutions out there.
So you'll create a page in your webapp specifically for this purpose. Use a Get request and pass in a url parameter. Then in the page_load event check for this paremter. if it exists then do your processing. By passing in the parameter you'll prevent accidental page loads that will cause the file to be uploaded and processed when you don't want it to be.
From the windows app make the url Get request by using the .Net HttpWebRequest. Example here: http://www.codeproject.com/KB/webservices/HttpWebRequest_Response.aspx