How to? A live "idea" stream?

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02-19-2010, 01:45 PM
1800Collect

How to? A live "idea" stream?

I've been trying to google this and I can't seem to get any traction and I just need a push in the right direction...

We're trying to have a flash file pull an XML file and display the latest results "live" to it. We can load an XML file and get the results and display them, it is this "live" part that we just can't figure out how to do.

So we have a bunch of speech bubbles floating across the screen. We have an HTML form that writes to a MySQL database and exports the results to an XML file. The flash file loads the XML and displays the "ideas" into each speech bubble that is floating across the screen.

We just don't know how to have the flash file "constantly check" the XML file for the newest additions and display them in the speech bubbles floating across the screen.

Any push in the right direction would be appreciated! Trying to find help with Flash is near impossible on Google as typing in "flash" brings in so many other results not related to the program. Plus I'm not sure what I should be looking for.
02-19-2010, 01:54 PM
5TonsOfFlax

The easiest way would be to poll that file at an interval. This is not "constantly" checking, but instead just checking often. You may have to add a cachebuster parameter to the urlrequest to prevent the browser from giving flash a cached version.

If you do want "push" functionality, you could establish a socket connection with your server and push new items through that, or even just push a notification that there are new items.
02-19-2010, 08:24 PM
alotan

for that flash media server was created, u can call the client from the server, instead of interval call from the client

search "live chat flash media server" in google
02-19-2010, 08:26 PM
5TonsOfFlax

Media Server is overkill for a project like this. A simple java process (or any other server side process) can handle it.

If you do want to look at full-blown streaming servers (no idea why), look into Red5.
02-20-2010, 05:58 AM
alotan

Quote:

Originally Posted by 5TonsOfFlax

Media Server is overkill for a project like this. A simple java process (or any other server side process) can handle it.

If you do want to look at full-blown streaming servers (no idea why), look into Red5.

if u have 100K clients calling to get update it will kill the server.

you need server that can push, media server can push, and you can develop in action script.

u can use red 5 and develop in java