flash actionscript: I'm trying to load an external image using the moviecliploader class and the
loadclip() method but it wont work with a php page that returns an image. Is
this because the file must have certain extentions in order for flash to
process them? I know the .php returns an image and the correct http headers so
whats the problem? If i replace the code to just use a .jpg file (to test) it
works fine so i'm pretty sure there isn't anything wrong with the code.

calling the php page may return the name of your jpg, but it doesn't return the
jpg. you should use loadVariables or the loadVars() class to call you php page
and load the name of your jpg. you can then use the moviecliploader class or
loadMovie() or loadMovieNum() to load the jpg.

no no, the php page actually returns just the image. The image isn't stored as
a .jpg file on the remote machine, its stored in a mySQL database. Therefore,
when "thumbs.php?file=1" is called it pulls 1.jpg out of the database and
actually returns just that image to browser, precluded by the appropriate http
header (image/jpeg)

if i rename a jpeg image file to a file with a php extension, flash has no
trouble loading it with the moviecliploader() class (or using loadMovie() ).

how does flash know you're NOT trying to load the php file? why would it
execute the code when you use loadClip() to access it?

thats very interesting, i hadn't thought of trying that. The difference is it
should see it exactly as a .jpg file named .php b/c the file is interpreted by
the php engine before flash ever see's it. It must be aproblem with headers
then. Do you know how flash identifies files as .jpg if not by extension? does
it use the http protocol headers? or does it simply read the file?

i have no idea what flash looks for to determine if a target file is able to be
displayed in the flash player or whether it evaluates a loading file, at all.

but i'd be surprised if your php file simply acted as a pointer to your jpg.
my guess is that it must execute its code and that code does something (whether
it returns a jpg or not, i can't say).

but even if it presents a jpg after executing, i can't see how loadClip would
work. you're asking it to cause the execution of your php file (not to dl it)
and you expect flash to dl whatever the php file presents.

you'd be more likely to be successful if you use getURL() and pointed to your
php file. that has more chance of success than using loadMovie or the
moviecliploader.

Here is a copy of the php file so you can see what it does. Since the flash
movie loads the movie clip from the loadClip() method at runtime it essentially
works the same way a browser does right?

It requests the page "thumbs.php" from the source machine, the source machine
finds "thumbs.php", parses the file (see below) and sends the result back to
the client machine. As you can see in the file below, the only thing the php
does is sends to the "browser" (flash plugin) a http header (image/jpeg), the
same way it would to IE or Netscape, and then simply echos the jpeg data. Now
this page displays fine when viewed from IE or Netscape so i know there isn't
anything wrong with the script unless there is some kind of added mechanism
flash uses to check to see if the files are jpegs (besides the http header). It
may do this for security reasons, etc.

P.S. 'db.inc' includes $hostname, $username, $password, etc.

<?php
include 'db.inc';

$file = clean($_GET["file"], 4);
$file = rtrim($file, ".jpg");

if (empty($file))
exit;

if (!($connection = @ mysql_pconnect($hostName,
$username,
$password)))
showerror();

if (!mysql_select_db("jazd", $connection))
showerror();

$query = "SELECT mimeType, thumb FROM images
WHERE id = $file";

if (!($result = @ mysql_query ($query,$connection)))
showerror();

$data = @ mysql_fetch_array($result);

if (!empty($data["thumb"]))
{
// Output the MIME header
header("Content-Type: {$data["mimeType"]}");
// Output the image
echo $data["thumb"];
}
?>

Nevermind, I'm an idiot. The whole process actually works fine. It seems the
original images were saved as progressive jpegs. Once i batched them in
photoshop and reuploaded them to the remote machine, flash will load them with
no problem.

imageLoader_mcl.loadClip("../php/thumb.php?file="+imageNum,
"thumb_"+targetNum);

works just fine.

thanks for the help tho!