Flash and XML: A Developer's Guide

By Dov Jacobson

Instead of just gee-whiz animation or cool user interfaces, Flash pros need to build truly useful sites that are viable for the long-term. That means interfacing Flash with dynamic content, backend databases, server-based applications, and even with other live users. The key to all these is XML. Now, there's a book that shows you exactly how to build enterprise Flash applications that integrate XML -- and leverage its full power.KEY TOPICS: Flash and XML is structured in 19 progressive lessons. In each lesson, the authors teach a key principle of Flash enterprise integration by first explaining it, and then demonstrating it with working code. The book begins with an introduction to Flash and ActionScript that's ideal for working developers, and also serves as a useful refresher for Flash professionals. Next, the authors introduce XML, review the role of HTTP in Web development, and start writing PHP-based server code for accessing back-end data. Next, they show how to extend Flash and server-side systems to a third-tier, connecting with back-end databases via SQL. Every chapter's code samples build on what's come before, constructing a robust application that encompasses client-side Flash code, server-side XML, back-end remote database access, and even emulated peer-to-peer connections.MARKET: For both Flash professionals (with or without XML experience) and software engineers involved in Web development (with or without Flash experience).

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0201729202
• ISBN13: 9780201729207
• Release Date: November 2001
• Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional
• Length: 368 Pages
• Weight: 1.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 7.4" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

A great end- to-end guide

I used this book to add database capabilities to our flash app, and could not have done it with out it. Well, perhaps that's an exaggeration, but it would have taken *significantly* longer. Getting flash connected to a database requires a combination of good strategy and lots arcane nitpicking details that span multiple knowledge domains. The book brings you along, step by step, in making the app dynamic. The discussions of database design and implementation via PHP and mySQL were very useful. The book was written during the day of Flash 5, but aside from a couple of outdated screen shots, the ActionScript is current with the version 7. There were a couple of places where some explanations were a little light, but all in all, it was worth many times the price I paid for it.

Clear and easy to understand.

Authors have deep understanding of the subject, which iseveident in their clear and simple way of explaining things.

Flash finally gets serious

This is far and away the best set of paradigms for using Flash in a client-server environment that I have seen. It is not a cookbook, and it doesn't provide a lot of cut-and-paste applications. What it does very well, is to demonstrate how to create a user interface that can access a multi-tiered web system. It is not intended for someone who has neither handled web services nor used Flash. Its examples transfer well to newer versions of Flash, and to environments other than the models used by the authors -- including those that use enterprise-level programming languages and databases.Some of the discussion may be either too elementary or irrelevant for some readers -- you probably shouldn't be reading this if you've never seen XML or SQL, and the details of the PHP examples aren't terribly interesting if you are handling the server side with something else. However, the details do provide concrete examples, and explain where Flash fits into the mix, and what it can and cannot do.I wish this book had existed when Flash 5 first came out -- it would have saved days of my life, and a lot of hair pulling. I hope that it will be updated.

A fine book, but with a glitch or two

This is the right book if you are a technologist/programmer interested in learning to work with flash rather than the usually assumed Photoshop jockey who just wants to know enough to put a few buttons in an animation. For a programmer, having to use menus and buttons to insert code is maddeningly slow and frustrating, and this book finally made it clear to me how to actually write scripts (and use the menus if necessary).The project for the tutorial is a good choice - just enough graphics to get one's feet wet, not enough to be distracting. And this book is funny, and very readable. However, the tutorial isn't quite as clear as it looks - in some places the terminology or instructions are slightly different from the menus, or just a bit incomplete. Flash jockeys will probably not notice - but as a newcomer to flash, I got stuck on the most ridiculously simple things. The silver lining was that I learned a lot figuring them out. You will want the Flash documentation handy to supplement.

Great book on Flash & XML

This book is a great tutorial on both Flash and XML that brings you up to speed on both technologies with clear and concise explanations. In addition, this book presents a number of important Web technologies, including PHP, MySQL, and sockets.It shows how to work with these technologies to create n-tier, interactive systems that access the full resources of the Internet. Worth every single penny!