Flash and ColdFusion

1
Flash and ColdFusion

• Using Multiple Front Ends with a CF Backend.
• Sandra Clark
• Shayna Productions
• slclark_at_shayna.com
• www.shayna.com

2
The Challenge

• How to use the same ColdFusion pages to serve
  multiple Front Ends (Flash, HTML) with no
  changes.
• Why?
• Flash has 96 penetration rate.
• Same on all Browsers
• Multiple Front ends using the same back end make
  it easier to port apps.
• Section 508, HTML, WAP, FLASH

3
The Problems

• How to get information into each front end
  without changing backend programming.
• Each front end has to be able to handle the same
  type of data.

4
The Requirements

• Each front end must be responsible for retrieving
  user input and processing it so that the
  ColdFusion server can use it in the same way.
• Each front end must be responsible for retrieving
  data and processing it for display.
• Back end must only be responsible for gathering
  information, running business tier, talking to
  database, and packaging up data for sending to
  front end.

5
The Flow
6
The Solution

• XML
• Standard way of sharing data
• Both CF and Flash can handle XML with Parsers
• CF_XMLPARSER from CFDev.com
• Flash 5.0 has xml object built in

7
Can it Work?

• ON TO THE CODE!

8
Gotchas

• Debugging is a pain (Flash)
• Could never get XML working in test mode,
• Had to publish it to get XML working.
• Flash kept caching the call to calc.cfm. Had to
  add a random number to the URL to make it work
  correctly.
• Make sure debugging is off in CF Template, Flash
  cannot handle anything other than the XML coming
  back.
• NO WHITE SPACE

9
Gotchas (2)

• Debugging is a Pain (CF)
• Cant see errors in a browser.
• Use CFAdmin Application Log to find errors.
• Use ltCFFilegt to write outputs to text file.
• No White Space Use CFSilent
• Use ReReplace to get rid of extra white space.
• Coming from HTML ltCFHTTPgt
• Get rid of attribute part before parsing XML

10
Links/References

• Books
• Foundation Flash (Friends of Ed)
• Foundation Actionscript (Friends of Ed)
• Flash XML Studio (Friends of Ed)
• Actionscript The Definitive Guide (OReilly)
• Inside XML (New Riders)
• Lists
• CFTalk (House of Fusion houseoffusion.com)
• Flash List (Figleaf - chattyfig.figleaf.com)
• Sites
• xml.org
• Flashcfm.com
• www.macromedia.com/software/coldfusion/resources/f
  lash_coldfusion

11
Flash/Dynamic Sites

• www.franklinplanner.com
• www.ihotelier.com/onescreen/onescreen.cfm
• CF_FlashBoard
• http//www.mallofcharleston.com/flash/cf_flashboar
  d/purchase.cfm
• www.smallblueprinter.com
• www.egomedia.com