C#, XML, Flash

[p00ya]

I was considering using a flash frontend to a windows app made in C# on the .NET framework, and using xml to communicate between the app and the flash.

Is this viable? Do i need to consider setting up anything server-side or what?

[VAYKENT]

Now before you read on - I am not familiar with C# or .NET, but... but.. Flash can either communicate in 'less-than-real-time' through XML documents stored on a server (stored/manipulated/interpreted), or it can use the XMLSocket object to communicate in 'almost-real-time'... It would depend on exactly what you needed Flash to do.... which begs the question.... What do you need Flash to do?

[p00ya]

well, im just hypothesizing about the possibilities at the moment. But mainly using flash a GUI, and passing data structures to and receiving from the app. Because data is persisted as XML in ADO.NET (ActiveXDataObjects) i recognized it as possibly a great way to have a nice GUI (in flash, as an AX control) at the same time as having a powerful application (C#)...

But as i said, i dont have any particular project in mind, i was just considering the possibilities for possible future projects

[hakpe]

It's a good idea to use Flash as a GUI for C# applications.
The best way to do this as I see it is to deploy your C#
application as a web service.
After deploying it you can use
XML.load("url to web service")
and get a SOAP document back.

[p00ya]

in reply to hakpe:
call me lame but i really cant be bothered looking at SOAP, despite the pressure.
This may sound lamer but what if it were a console app...
the system.xml namespace has the all the appropriate classes and i could probably infer datasets etc., the xml framework seems to be pretty good that way.

[hakpe]

Hello again.
There is no need to use SOAP and web services if you
don't want to. The advantage you get though is that
you don't have to bother about creating the XML docs.
I advise you to use C#, XML and Flash anyway (with or
without web services). We have been working with it for
a while and find it very useful.
Another advantage you get (in our case at least) is to
get a clean interface between programmers and designers.

Good luck

[tupps]

How easy is it to access information via SOAP?

My understanding is that SOAP is XML data presented via HTTP?

So therefore all you would need to do is set flash up to read the SOAP data?


Thanks

Luke

[neeld]

It works fine, but with a couple catches.

1 - SOAP goes both directions, so you generally don't use the much simpler GET method with a couple variables, you need to use the xml.sendAndLoad() because your request is also an XML document.

2 - Web services are generally accessed from another domain. This causes problems since Flash needs to load from the same domain. You would need to setup a proxy of some sort for it to work online.

I have an example I slapped together you can take a look at. It uses a translation service set up by BableFish.altavista.com
http://720.com/downloads/translate/translate.zip

You need to run it from your machine due to the above cross-domain issues.

Neeld

[tupps]

It is easy enough to get XML data across domains. You can get data from other servers using most scripting languages, I have the details in the flash-XML faq

http://www.tupps.com/flash/faq/xml.html

Thanks

Luke

[tomincrow]

You can find some simple C# XML communication samples, it may help u

http://csharp.net-informations.com/x...mltutorial.htm

crowel.

[sandeeish7]

Their a good guide to xml and web serices here, http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/libr...=vs.71%29.aspx and a decent xml c# data binder here
http://www.liquid-technologies.com/x...ema-to-cs.aspx