Flash Widgets
Hussain Fakhruddin
http://hussulinux.blogspot.com
hussulinux@gmail.com

Widgets :
Window Gadgets
➔
Can be embedded on
➔
Websites,
➔
Blogs,
➔
Desktops,
➔
Social networking sites ...
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Really easy to develop
➔
Many Frameworks
➔
2

Widgets widgets widgets
3

What are we waiting for?
What we're going to do is this:
Retrieve data from a database.
Print it somewhere using scripting language.
Import this in the flash.
What we need?
Adobe Flash( I'll show all demos using Flash 8)
PHP/ASP/JSP/CGI/RoR any scripting language. I'll use PHP
Database if any.
4

Lets get started
On the server.
Step 1: (Without XML)
Create a script which will throw out the data to you in a
GET variable form
Example
author=Hussain&desc=I+am+a+stupid+programmer&picu
rl=me.jpg
Also create a database
create table barcamp
(
uid int(10) primary key auto_increment,
author varchar(50),
desciption text,
picurl varchar(60)
);
5

PHP Script for the widget
<?php
$uid = $_GET['uid']; // I will receive this from the flash
include ('db.php'); //Contains my Database Connectivity code.
$rs = mysql_query(\"select * from barcamp where uid=$uid\");
// I'm being lazy to check for errors here
$arr = mysql_fetch_array($rs);
//Output format, I am using URL encode method, One may also use XML
echo \"author=\".$arr['author'];
echo \"&desc=\".$arr['desciption'];
echo \"&picurl=\".$arr['picurl'];
?>
6

Flash Design
Our flash widget design
7

Flash ActionScript
Now to get this data into our flash widget
function LoadData() {
myvar=new LoadVars(); //Create a New LoadVars object
//Load our created URL
myvar.load(\"http://www.mywidgets.com/widget/getWidgetInfo.php?uid=\" + this.uid);
//I'll explain where this.uid comes from later.
myvar.onLoad = function( ){
/* Our PHP variables are available inside flash as
myvar.author;
myvar.desc;
myvar.picurl;
*/
author = myvar.author;
desc = myvar.desc;
LoadMovie(pic,picurl);
}
}
//Call the above function
LoadData();
8

Embed this
<embed allownetworking=\"all\"
pluginspage=\"http://www.macromedia.com/go/
getflashplayer\" quality=\"high\"
allowscriptaccess=\"always\" align=\"middle\"
flashvars=\"uid=1\"
src=\"http://www.mywidgets.com/widget/mywidg
et.swf\" height=\"230\" type=\"application/x-
shockwave-flash\" bgcolor=\"#ffffff\" width=\"194\"
name=\"mywidget\" />
</embed>
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