Displaying Multiple Access Records with Flash and ASP

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by Chris bizzell (February 22, 2002)
Most Flash & ASP tutorials only deal with returning one row of information at a time from the database to the Flash movie. I was interested in displaying multiple records and fields simultaneously. One resource (FlashCFM.com) pointed the way and I used this start to arrive at a nice solution which is explained here.

User Rating (222 votes)
8 reviews available | Read the reviews »
Server Model:ASP JavaScript, ASP VBScript
Technologies:Flash

I wrestled for quite sometime on how to integrate Flash with Active Server Pages and owe a lot to some excellent tutorials available on the web :
www.15seconds.com/issue/010605.htm and www.asp101.com/articles/flash/

However, most of these tutorials only dealt with returning one row of information at a time. I was interested in displaying multiple records and fields simultaneously. One resource pointed the way and I used this start to arrive at the following solution.

Database
Download Access table here

ASP Page
To get this to work, you must format your ASP to output results in a way Flash can interpret them. Flash reads variables in URL encoded format - i.e.:

 &name    = Bob

Flash sees this as the variable "name" having the value of "Bob". Sounds great, but how do I do that? Here is the code:

 

ASP explained
The code is fairly straightforward :

  1. Connect to your Access table and loop through each record
  2. As you loop set up a variable - here I use " collect " - and concatenate each new value to this variable as you loop through the data table. Also, after you add each new value to the value of "collect " add the "&," character. This will tell flash that a new value pair is coming as well as format the results so that Flash can handle them as an array.
  3. Response.write out the contents of the collect variable assigning these values to the variable "output"
  4. The process is the same for each table field you wish to return to Flash as you can see from my example with the variable "eoutput"
  5. Set up a variable named Counter and give it the value of 1. We will use this later to signal Flash that our results are ready to be displayed.

The output from this ASP page looks like this :

&output=Bill Sanders,Mark Winstanley,Betty Boop,Chief Crazy Horse,JoJo Yes,Junior
Whiz,Wild Bill,Calamity Jones,Louie Louie,New Kid,Delia Q. Sanders,Charley Clapp,
George Galore,Harry Potts,Vern Lawrence,Holy Cow,end
&eoutput=bill@sandlight.com,mark@smoggywood.com,poopoopeedo@easy.net,
drums@feather.com,jeepers@castle.gov,buzz@wordnow.org

Now - we are ready to put these variables into Flash!
Next: The Flash side of things

User Reviews

Total of 8 reviews
Good Info, but didn't work for me
Written by Mary MaryMary on December 19, 2003

I followed the tutorial and I created my connection to SQL rather than Access. When I run the ASP I get the data as it said it would appear in the browser. I downloaded the Flash application and made sure the right ASP page was being called. ...

just a hint
Written by Joaquim Rendeiro on September 8, 2003

wouldb't it be easyer if you used xml? i mean, you could return the records like <record name='John' email='j@you.us' />. i'm saying this only because the performance of splitting strings and using arrays ends up loosing against the ...

::Well appreciated tutorial::
Written by Doc Navarro on August 15, 2003

helped me obtain ideas about connecting datagrid Flash UI Component to a database... specially the string splitting... pretty cool, but i need another assistance regarding commanding Flash to display a picture directly out of a database... thanks ...

RE: Tutorial Update
Written by Alessandro Cacciagrano on May 14, 2003

gdkghkghkghk

Display Images too ?
Written by Jairo Ochoa on February 6, 2003

That's great and seems easy, but what about displaying images? Or even, how can I do a 'mailto' for each name. Thanks

Tutorial Update
Written by Chris bizzell on October 29, 2002

I have updated the example to include presenting the data with Flash MX and the new DataGrid component. View at : http://www.bizwerk.net/asp20tutorial/flash_multiple_fields.htm

ASaP
Written by Roark Dority on March 23, 2002

Along these same lines, if anyone is interested, there's an excellent ASP generating wizard (shareware app) at: www.data-asap.com Free if you just need to display data and only $29 if you need your visitors to be able to add/remove/modify records!!

Appreciatable effort !!!
Written by Karim Moharram on February 26, 2002

I just wanted to thank you so much, as I've been through so much to find out the way in which I can do such things...as I'm kinda fluent in Flash 5 and ASP.NET, and wanted to get a way between them to get working together..especially with ...

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