Using loadVariables for content: is it suitable?

[ptolemy]

I'm creating a web site for a student society at my university. I have constructed the site entirely in Flash 5.0 and for ease of maintenance, I have created movie clips that will display content from several text files on the server. This simplified things greatly as it externalized content. My main concern now is whether it is suitable or not? Has anyone done this in the past and run into a deadend?

Matt

[jonnya]

Yes, very suitable. I have used this technique a number of times, and it works very well. Also there's the fact that a non-designer without Flash can update the site by just changing the text documents is a nice feature of a site built like this.

[Chas]

Hi ptolemy,

Provided your sites not going to get multiple hits per second loading from text files works great, its always a good idea to prevent the file from caching tho.

Here's a well used function for loading external file content into Flash without it caching.

Frame 3

function noCache (url, targetstring) {
    if (url.indexOf("?") == -1) {
        eval(targetstring).loadVariables(url add "?time=" add getTimer(), "");
    } else {
        eval(targetstring).loadVariables(url add "&ztime=" add getTimer(), "");
    }
}
_level0.noCache("pathToYour/textFile.txt", "_level0"); 

Frame 5

if (page1 == null){
    _root.gotoAndPlay(4);
}
else {
    _root.play();
} 

textFile contents
<snip>
page1=Blah Blah Blah Blah....
</snip>

[ptolemy]

That's great! Thanks for the tips guys

[Nancy]

Is there a solution other than PHP, since that is not available.

Thanks,
Nancy

[Chas]

Hi,

Which solution are you asking about? caching?

[Nancy]

Yes a solution for browser caching.

Obviously I didn't do enough searching before posting, as I see this can be quite a problem.

I am wanting to update the variables contained in a text file. It appears your initial response to ptolemy refers to PHP, which is not an option for me at the moment. I also have some jpg images loading with the loadmovie in AS, which also get cached.

It seems everything works great on my PC, but not when things are on a server.

Thanks,
Nancy

[Chas]

Here's a couple of examples using a custom actionscript function called noCache - all you need to change is the path to the text file or level if your using the F5 version.

In these examples the stopCache.txt file uses this text:

someValue=blah blah blah

// Flash 5 version

// Frame 1
function noCache(targetURL, targetstring) {
	var unique = Math.round(Math.random() * 10000000);
	// test if any query string values are present
	if (targetURL.indexOf("?") == -1) {
		this[targetstring].loadVariables(targetURL + "?u=" + unique, "");
	} else {
		this[targetstring].loadVariables(targetURL + "&u=" + unique, "");
	}
}

// load text file data into Flash
noCache("http://localhost/Flash/stopCache.txt", "_level0");

// Frame 3
// test if your text var is loaded
if (someValue == null){ 
    gotoAndPlay(2); 
} 
else { 
    trace(someValue);
} 
stop();


// Flash MX version

var c = new LoadVars();
c.onLoad = showContent;
function noCache(targetURL) {
	var unique = Math.round(Math.random() * 10000000);
	if (targetURL.indexOf("?") == -1) {
		c.load(targetURL + "?u=" + unique);
	} else {
		c.load(targetURL + "&u=" + unique);
	}
}
function showContent() {
	textField.text = this["someValue"];
}

// load text file data into Flash
noCache("http://localhost/Flash/stopCache.txt");

[csn]

What's Macromedia's rationale for allowing LoadVars, etc. to only load URLs from the same domain as the flash file?

[Chas]

to only load URLs from the same domain as the flash file?

No you can load from external sources as well but you'll need to do it with middleware (PHP, ASP etc.) - this is how blog readers like news monkey work.

There's some examples at http://www.flash-db.com/

Nancy, here's another example:

var unique = Math.round(Math.random() * 1000000);
this.loadVariables("pathToYour/textDoc.txt?u=" + unique);

[webQS]

So you can't load another domain's content and access their server side scripts..
Say for instance there was a script on xyz domain that sent an email. You could then use a Flash form on abc domain to send emails through another domain's web server.

If you want rendered HTML from another domain's script then the PHP file function can do this. This won't save the other domain's script, of course!

HTH
James

What's Macromedia's rationale for allowing LoadVars, etc. to only load URLs from the same domain as the flash file?