I'm looking for a way to get the status of a stream from Flash Media Server to action script. I need to know if a stream has any publishers/listeners from flex/ActionScript.
Take a look at the Adobe Flash Media Server Administration API. There are calls that might help you, such as getNetStreams() and get NetStreamStats(). You could try writing a server-side action script class that makes these calls to the admin API, then pushes the results back to your Flex application through a callback on your NetConnection.
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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).
How do you capture errors that happen on client side when building RIA apps using Flex and Silverlight? What are the common practices? I have seen some asynch js calls to a web service implemented but would like to know how the community is dealing with it.
First, I use client side logging all of the times.
the way I handle it depends on the entire application.
if I use an AMF gateway then there's a call for an application error, with every error that occurs the server is notified, in the server side a bug is open in BugZilla (this is what we use, you can use any other hook you want).
If I use a web-service based application then there's a web-service call for a client error.
one would say you shouldn't sample the server with every error, I disagree with this comment because an error in the client side is rare, it goes thorough QA before being released to the client so I want to know immediately on every error the client is experiencing.
In Silverlight I like to use a WebClient to log back to a web service somewhere -- you can do this directly in the Silverlight application without calling out to JavaScript.
To catch exceptions that are fired when your code isn't on the stack, you can use the Application.UnhandledException event.
I've used the same approach as Avi Tzurel - you need to know on the server side when an error appeared in the Flex client. If you want to collect more data (all the log messages, warnings) I would use an internal buffer and I will flush it asynchronously.
Anyway, you need to take into consideration if your customers are ok with this approach..maybe you need their agreement before sending the error message to the server.
I basically percolate all errors to the top, and capture them in the unhandled exception. I display a friendly message to the user. However, throughout my application I implement an ILogger interface. This interface can be initialized with various levels and handles any messaging. You can set it up so the user can add an init param to determine whether or not to transmit the errors to a service, and I typically have the logger write the messages with Debug.WriteLine if the debugger is attached to make it very easy to trace issues in debug mode.
In Silverlight you may want to consider the Logging and Exception Handling Application Blocks from the Silverlight Integration Pack for Enterprise Library.
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).
I am a Flex developer and never used CGI before. I wanted to create a solution whereby A flex would call a CGI script to read a database. Ive been trying to look for examples on how such a solution would work. I was hoping someone on here might be able to shed some light as to how this would work, and what are the various components required.
Thanks
You can do it with the URLLoader class. Load the CGI url using the urlloader class - execute queries using cgi script and return the response - handle the results in the complete event handler of URLLoader. Check this answer for details on using the URLLoader class.
Probably the easiest way is to output XML from your CGI and use Flex's HTTPService to connect to the CGI and get data. Sending updates can be done through sending HTTP Request Parameters via HTTPService.
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