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Flash and ColdFusion

Flash and ColdFusion. Using Multiple Front Ends with a CF Backend. Sandra Clark Shayna Productions slclark@shayna.com www.shayna.com. 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 .

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Flash and ColdFusion

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  1. Flash and ColdFusion Using Multiple Front Ends with a CF Backend. Sandra Clark Shayna Productions slclark@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) • Can’t see errors in a browser. • Use CFAdmin Application Log to find errors. • Use <CFFile> to write outputs to text file. • No White Space – Use CFSilent • Use ReReplace to get rid of extra white space. • Coming from HTML <CFHTTP> • 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 (O’Reilly) • 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/flash_coldfusion

  11. Flash/Dynamic Sites • www.franklinplanner.com • www.ihotelier.com/onescreen/onescreen.cfm • CF_FlashBoard • http://www.mallofcharleston.com/flash/cf_flashboard/purchase.cfm • www.smallblueprinter.com • www.egomedia.com

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