More Books
Flash Communication Server
Flash Communication Server
Table of Contents
Copyright
About the Authors
Brian Lesser
Giacomo
Joey Lott
Robert Reinhardt
Justin Watkins
Foreword
Preface
What Does FlashCom Offer?
What's in This Book?
How to Use This Book
Audience
ActionScript 1.0 Versus ActionScript 2.0
Server-Side ActionScript
The flash-communications.net Site
Director, Breeze, and Other Options
Flash Video Options
Licensing and Hosting Options
Conventions Used in This Book
Voice
Using Code Examples
Safari Enabled
Comments and Questions
Acknowledgments
Part I:  FlashCom Foundation
Chapter 1.  Introducing the Flash Communication Server
Section 1.1.  Clients and Servers
Section 1.2.  Creating an Application
Section 1.3.  Real-Time Messaging Protocol
Section 1.4.  The Communication Classes
Section 1.5.  Communicating with Application Servers, Databases, and Directory Servers
Section 1.6.  Firewalls and Security
Section 1.7.  Getting Started
Section 1.8.  Hello Video!
Section 1.9.  Conclusion
Chapter 2.  Communication Components
Section 2.1.  Overview of Communication Components
Section 2.2.  Summary of Communication Components
Section 2.3.  Creating an Application that Monitorsa Connection
Section 2.4.  Building a Simple Chat Room
Section 2.5.  Adding Audio and Video to the Chat Room
Section 2.6.  Forgoing the SimpleConnect Component
Section 2.7.  Conclusion
Chapter 3.  Managing Connections
Section 3.1.  Making a Connection
Section 3.2.  Managing a Connection
Section 3.3.  Reusing a NetConnection Object
Section 3.4.  Multiple Simultaneous NetConnection Objects
Section 3.5.  Testing and Debugging Network Connections
Section 3.6.  Subclassing the NetConnection Class
Section 3.7.  Communication Components Without SimpleConnect
Section 3.8.  Conclusion
Chapter 4.  Applications, Instances, and Server-Side ActionScript
Section 4.1.  Scripting Application Instances
Section 4.2.  Differences Between Flash ActionScript and Server-Side ActionScript
Section 4.3.  The Life of an Application Instance
Section 4.4.  Running a Simple Hello World Test Script
Section 4.5.  A More Realistic Example
Section 4.6.  Instance-to-Instance Communications
Section 4.7.  Script Filenames and Locations in Detail
Section 4.8.  Testing and Debugging Server-SideScript Files
Section 4.9.  Designing Communication Applications
Section 4.10.  Conclusion
Part II:  Audio, Video, and Data Streams
Chapter 5.  Managing Streams
Section 5.1.  A Simple Publisher/Subscriber Example
Section 5.2.  Stream Names
Section 5.3.  Publishing Streams in Detail
Section 5.4.  Playing Streams in Detail
Section 5.5.  The Stream Class
Section 5.6.  Publishing and Playing ActionScript Data
Section 5.7.  Creating Synchronized Presentations
Section 5.8.  The NetStream and Stream Information Objects
Section 5.9.  Stream Enhancements and Limitations
Section 5.10.  Conclusion
Chapter 6.  Microphone and Camera
Section 6.1.  Working with Microphone/Audio Input
Section 6.2.  Working with Camera Input
Section 6.3.  Building a Message-Taking Application
Section 6.4.  Building a Surveillance Application
Section 6.5.  Conclusion
Chapter 7.  Media Preparation and Delivery
Section 7.1.  Audio and Video Compression
Section 7.2.  Converting Prerecorded Materialto FLV Format
Section 7.3.  Using Flash Pro's Media Components
Section 7.4.  Enabling Multiple Bit Rate FLVsWithin an Application
Section 7.5.  Streaming MP3 Audio
Section 7.6.  Conclusion
Part III:  Remote Connectivity and Communication
Chapter 8.  Shared Objects
Section 8.1.  Objects and Shared Objects
Section 8.2.  Getting a Shared Object in Flash
Section 8.3.  Updates and Frame Rates
Section 8.4.  Scripting Shared Objects on the Server
Section 8.5.  Temporary and Persistent Shared Objects
Section 8.6.  Proxied Shared Objects
Section 8.7.  Shared Objects and Custom Classes
Section 8.8.  Avoiding Collisions
Section 8.9.  Optimizing Shared Object Performance
Section 8.10.  Broadcasting Remote Method Callswith send( )
Section 8.11.  A Simple Video and Text Chat Application
Section 8.12.  Conclusion
Chapter 9.  Remote Methods
Section 9.1.  Why Use Calls?
Section 9.2.  The send( ) and call( ) Methods
Section 9.3.  Client-to-Server Calls
Section 9.4.  Server-to-Client Calls
Section 9.5.  Server-to-Server Calls
Section 9.6.  A Simple Lobby/Rooms Application
Section 9.7.  Debugging Calls
Section 9.8.  Advanced Topics
Section 9.9.  Conclusion
Chapter 10.  Server Management API
Section 10.1.  Connecting to the Admin Service
Section 10.2.  Using the Server Management API
Section 10.3.  Server Management API Uses
Section 10.4.  Conclusion
Chapter 11.  Flash Remoting
Section 11.1.  The Remoting Gateway
Section 11.2.  Remoting Basics
Section 11.3.  Role of Remoting in FlashCom Applications
Section 11.4.  Securing Access
Section 11.5.  Conclusion
Chapter 12.  ColdFusion MX and FlashCom
Section 12.1.  Understanding ColdFusion MXand Flash Remoting
Section 12.2.  Using Flash Remoting to Log Events
Section 12.3.  Getting a List of Streams
Section 12.4.  Using ColdFusion and FTP to Mirror Streams
Section 12.5.  Conclusion
Part IV:  Design and Deployment
Chapter 13.  Building Communication Components
Section 13.1.  Source Files
Section 13.2.  People Lists
Section 13.3.  A Simple People List
Section 13.4.  Listenable Shared Objects
Section 13.5.  Status and People List
Section 13.6.  Text Chat
Section 13.7.  Shared Text
Section 13.8.  Video Conference and Video Window
Section 13.9.  PeopleGrid
Section 13.10.  Summary
Section 13.11.  Conclusion
Chapter 14.  Understanding the Macromedia Component Framework
Section 14.1.  The Component Framework
Section 14.2.  Under the Hood of the Chat Component
Section 14.3.  Creating a Simple Component from Scratch: SharedTextInput
Section 14.4.  Creating a Container Component: SharedAddressForm
Section 14.5.  Creating an Authenticating Component
Section 14.6.  Integrating Components with Your Existing Applications
Section 14.7.  Understanding the Framework
Section 14.8.  Conclusion
Chapter 15.  Application Design Patterns and Best Practices
Section 15.1.  Shared Object Management
Section 15.2.  Moving Code to the Server
Section 15.3.  Building Façades on the Server
Section 15.4.  Server-Side Client Queues
Section 15.5.  A Framework for Recording and Playing Back Componentized Applications
Section 15.6.  Components and Component Frameworks
Section 15.7.  Conclusion
Chapter 16.  Building Scalable Applications
Section 16.1.  Coordinating Instances
Section 16.2.  Scalability and Load Balancing
Section 16.3.  Conclusion
Chapter 17.  Network Performance, Latency,and Concurrency
Section 17.1.  Latency
Section 17.2.  Bandwidth
Section 17.3.  Concurrency
Section 17.4.  Conclusion
Chapter 18.  Securing Applications
Section 18.1.  The Three A's: Authentication, Authorization, and Accounting
Section 18.2.  Authentication
Section 18.3.  Authorization
Section 18.4.  Accounting
Section 18.5.  Suggestions and References
Section 18.6.  Conclusion
Index
SYMBOL
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
R
S
T
U
V
W

1.2. Creating an Application

Due to the client/server nature of communication applications, the developer ordinarily creates a client-side Flash movie to handle the user interaction and a separate server-side FlashCom application to which it connects. Client-side Flash movies can be written in ActionScript 1.0 or 2.0.

The server-side FlashCom application is written in Server-Side ActionScript (SSAS), which is very similar to the well-known client-side ActionScript. Throughout the book, the code examples identify whether they are client-side or server-side code. To create a FlashCom application, first create a home directory for it on the server. This registers the application with the server and makes it available to movies that attempt to connect to it. Server-Side ActionScript source code files placed in an application's home directory give each application its unique server-side behavior. The Flash authoring tool or integrated development environment (IDE) is used to develop the movie and optionally code the HTML page into which the movie is embedded. During authoring, a Flash movie is saved as a .fla file. When the Flash movie is ready for distribution, it is compiled into a .swf file using Flash's File Publish command. After the HTML page and .swf file are posted on a web server, they can be downloaded by a browser, allowing the Flash movie to connect to the application on the FlashCom Server.

Developing a Flash movie almost always involves programming with ActionScript, Flash's scripting language based on the ECMA standard (similar to JavaScript). The book assumes an intermediate familiarity with ActionScript. To learn ActionScript, see ActionScript for Flash MX: The Definitive Guide and Essential ActionScript 2.0, both from O'Reilly. In addition to typical objects, ActionScript supports a special MovieClip datatype. Movie clips are the essential building blocks for Flash animations and are the basis for higher-level components such as the Button, DataGrid, and Tree.

The Flash movie can be hardcoded to connect to a particular instance of a FlashCom application or it can load the instance's address at runtime. For example, the movie could load an XML file with connection information or load address information from the HTML page.

For many video-on-demand applications, you can use the prebuilt FLVPlayer, which doesn't require any Flash authoring, available from:

http://www.peldi.com/blog/FLVPlayer.html

The FLVPlayer's behavior can be customized to connect to any application instance and includes automatic bandwidth detection and stream selection. A video player is also available as part of the Macromedia Video Kit:

http://www.macromedia.com/software/studio/flashvideokit

Creating an application to do anything more complex than video-on-demand requires some level of Flash authoring. Unless stated otherwise, when I refer to Flash, I mean the Flash authoring tool, such as Flash MX 2004 or Flash MX Professional 2004 (Flash Pro). If you are not familiar with authoring in Flash, see Flash Out of the Box (O'Reilly), which is an excellent introduction to the authoring tool.

You can create simple communication applicationssuch as a video conferencing applicationusing prebuilt components such as the SimpleConnect, PeopleList, and VideoConference components supplied by Macromedia. You can drag the components from Flash's Components panel to the Stage to construct the user interface. Using Flash's Properties panel, you can configure the components to work together and supply them with the address of the application instance on a FlashCom Server to connect to. Chapter 2 describes working with Macromedia's communication components in this way.

For more diverse applications, you must use ActionScript to create or customize components and build unique user interfaces. Chapter 13 through Chapter 15 describe how to extend the existing components or roll your own. Existing communication-related ActionScript classes make developing custom components and applications much easier. On the client side, they include the NetConnection, NetStream, Camera, SharedObject, and Microphone classes. Server-Side ActionScript classes include the Application, Client, Stream, and SharedObject classes. We'll cover these classes and their methods throughout the remainder of the book.