flash actionscript: Hi, all.

I got question on real time monitoring program here. I am wondering how can do
that in flash.
Basicly we have a senosr to keep track of the depth of water. The data of the
water depth are stored in sql database.
According to the data we stored, i want to show an animation which
demonstrates how the water depth varies for some time period( change the color
and depth of the water model inside flash ). Can anybody give me some advice on
how to achieve this? I want to know how should i get the data from database
into flash, Maybe write an asp.net web page to generate data in xml formate and
let flash read it? still, how to achieve this), and how can i generate the
animation within the program? Definitely, i can't draw it with the interface,
cause i can get data only at run time.
thanks for any clue and help.

[quoted text, click to view]

That is one way. You could also have the asp page just return the data to
flash directly, sidestepping xml. Have a look at the LoadVars class,
specifically it's sendAndLoad method which has an example of sending data to
a cold fusion script, but it's no different for ASP or PHP.

Say you wanted to get the water levels for some date range. In Flash write a
function like so:

var allWater:Array = new Array();
function getWaterLevels(fromDate:String, toDate:String){
var recv = new LoadVars();
var snd = new LoadVars();
recv.onLoad = function(success) {
if(success){
allWater = [];
var ind = 1;
while(this["id" + ind]){
var curWater = [];
curWater.push(this["id" + ind]);
curWater.push(this["date" + ind]);
curWater.push(this["level" + ind]);
allWater.push(curWater);
ind++;
}
}
}
snd.start_date = fromDate;
snd.end_date = toDate;
snd.sendAndLoad("http://domain.com/scripts/getwater.php", newsR);
}

I use PHP so you'll have to adapt, but you'd do something like so:

<?PHP
$connection = mysql_connect("localhost", "dbuser", "dbpassword");
mysql_select_db("databaseName", $connection);

$sql = "SELECT id,thedate,level FROM watertable WHERE thedate BETWEEN
'$_POST[start_date]' AND '$_POST[end_date]'";

$result = mysql_query($sql, $connection);

$rString = "";
$row = mysql_fetch_array($result);
$ind = 1;
while ($row){
$rString .= "&id$ind=".$row["id"];
$rString .= "&date$ind=".$row["thedate"];
$rString .= "&level$ind=".$row["level"];

$row = mysql_fetch_array($result);
$ind++;
}
exit($rString);
?>

Hopefully, that'll get you going. It's untested, but I modified some known
working code to give you an example you could relate to.

So, you have the data in Flash now, how to animate it... You can use Flash's
drawing API to create vector shapes on the fly. You could simply move a
shape up and down according to the data, etc...a few ways you could approach
this.



--
Dave -
Head Developer
www.blurredistinction.com
Adobe Community Expert
http://www.adobe.com/communities/experts/

I did say it was code I modified... <g>

This line in the example:
snd.sendAndLoad("http://domain.com/scripts/getwater.php", newsR);

Should read: snd.sendAndLoad("http://domain.com/scripts/getwater.php",
recv);

since you want to call the onLoad function within the recv LoadVars object.


--
Dave -
Head Developer
www.blurredistinction.com
Adobe Community Expert
http://www.adobe.com/communities/experts/

Thanks for the answer.

But can u give me an example of how can i generate the animations with script?
Cause the time range might vary, so the number of frames might vary. Also,
actually the number of water containers might
vary as well (more than one). So i think i might need to use script to
generate the graphs.
More over, even if i draw the vetor grouph through the interface, it seems
not to be an object at all (have no instance name.) Should i convert the graph
into movie clips? if yes, then how can i change the size/color of the movie
clips at different frames ? (should i set the time line for each of the clip?
or the movie clip don't have to have its own time line, only change the movie
clips color/size at the main time line?)
Really appreciate your help. I cross posted just because i don't know where
should i post them. Won't let it happen again.