CHRISTOPHJPETERChristoph Peter

This is a small navigation concept I did using Flash and XML. Its about a hundred lines of code but shows really well how easy it is to use xml data in flash. The code is free to download.

Download: Fla

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In this post I want to describe a very simple technique I use in order to read Mysql data into flash via a php-dynamically created xml file. So what do you need to get this work:

• a Mysql Database filled with Data of your choice
• a php capable webserver, if you dont want to upload everytime for testing try installing xampp as a localhost.
• Adobe Flash
• a text editor for writing the php file

Alright lets get started with the php by connection to the database. create a php file called config.php and fill it up with this content

define('MYSQL_HOST',     'localhost');
define('MYSQL_USER',     'user');
define('MYSQL_PASS',     'pass');
define('MYSQL_DATABASE', 'db');

    if(!@mysql_connect(MYSQL_HOST, MYSQL_USER, MYSQL_PASS)) {
        die("Connection could not be established");
    }
    if(!mysql_select_db(MYSQL_DATABASE)) {
        die("Error ".mysql_error());
    }
    $sql="SET NAMES 'utf8'";
	$result= mysql_query($sql) or die(mysql_error())</pre>
save the file. now create a file called data.php. There we want to have a function that gets a list of all the columns in our Mysql table and then reads and prints them line by line into a nice xml format which can then be read by flash.
<pre lang="php">include "../config.php";

global $table ;
$table ="your table"; // the name of the table you want to read
table_to_xml(view($table)); // this calls the functions

function get_fields($table){ // this function gives us an Array with all the collumns in the database
	$sql ="SHOW COLUMNS FROM ".$table;
	$result= mysql_query($sql) or die(mysql_error());
	$fields=array();
	while($row=mysql_fetch_assoc($result)){
		array_push($fields,$row);
	}
	return $fields;
}

function view($table){ // this is the actual sql call where we fetch the data from the database
	$sql="SELECT * FROM $table WHERE del != 'true'";
	$result= mysql_query($sql) or die(mysql_error());
	return $result;
}

function table_to_xml($result){ // this function will then print the data in simple xml format using properties with the fieldnames to store the values
	$fields=get_fields($table)
	echo ''; 	while($row=mysql_fetch_assoc($result)){ 			$f=0; 			echo '';	 	} 	echo '';
}

now we are almost done. create a new fla file and enter this code in the first frame.

data_xml:XML=new XML()
data_xml.ignorewhite=true
data_xml.onLoad=function(){ if(success){	 trace(this)} else{ 	trace("an error occured")} }
data_xml.load("http://localhost/yourfolder/data.php") // it is important to include the http://localhost because otherwise the php will not be

and now you are done. If you test the project you should get all your data traced. let me know if this was helpful, or if I have errors in my code.