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View the Flash visualization

Read an interview I gave CapeScience regarding this Flash client.

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Tutorials

Requesting Xml from a Webservice via GET (ActionScript 1.0)

Even though the source file for the Flash client is not for download, I will provide some information about how exactly Xml is loaded from the Webservice into Flash, as I have received repeated emails about this topic.

Basically this is no different from loading an Xml file from an URL, but instead of linking to a file, the URL consists of the path to the Webservice plus added parameters that invoke the methods that prompt the Webservice to return certain Xml data.

For instance, the URL "GET_Weather.asmx/Get_Countries?" will return an Xml file that lists all the countries available.

Or "GET_Weather.asmx/Get_WeatherReport?code=EDI" will return the airport information for Edinburgh.

So to load the Xml that contains the list of all available countries you can use:

var countryXML = new XML();
countryXML.ignoreWhite = true;
countryXML.onLoad = populateCountries;
countryXML.load("weatherFlash.asmx/Get_Countries?");

That's it. Or to load the list of airports based on the country selected in the ListBox named "countryListBox", you can use something like.

var selectedCountry =
   countryListBox.getSelectedItem().label;
var airportQuery = "weatherFlash.asmx/Get_Airports?";
airportQuery += "countrySelected="+selectedCountry;
var airportXML = new XML();
airportXML.ignoreWhite = true;
airportXML.onLoad = populateAirports;
airportXML.load(airportQuery);

Note: Xml data can also be loaded from a Webservice using POST or SOAP. Flash Remoting provides powerful interfaces to support this on a server. However, if a Flash application needs to be potentially able to read data from CD as well as from web servers, or if Flash Remoting is not an option, the shown implementation is the one to choose.

Understanding which methods a Webservice provides

To understand which methods a Webservice provides and which parameters it needs, each Webservice contains a so called service description (WSDL). You have to understand quite a bit of Webservices to actually understand the WDSL information directly, however, ASP.NET Webservices come with a handy HTML interface that make understanding easy.

Just open the proxy webservice that I used for my Flash application or the more generic GET_Weather Webservice and see. On the first page you get a list of all the supported methods. If you click on any of them you will get to a page that describes the different ways of how to invoke this method. Under HTTP GET it would e.g. say:
GET /webservices/weatherFlash.asmx/Get_Airports?countrySelected=string
This is the URL to call, whereby string must be replaced with the appropriate parameter value.

Using the Xml data (ActionScript 1.0)

This is not the place to explain how Xml data can be used within Flash once loaded. However, for convenience sake here is a short description of how e.g. the county list is displayed in the ListBox called "countryListBox".

The above code contains the line:

countryXML.onLoad = populateCountries;

Therefore as soon as the Xml is loaded the following function is called:

function populateCountries() {
    var countryArray = new Array();
    var rootNode = countryXML.firstChild;
    var countryNodes = rootNode.childNodes;
    var thisNode = rootNode.firstChild;
    countryArray[0] = "<Please Select a Country>";
    for (var i=1; i<countryNodes.length; i++) {
        countryArray[i] = thisNode.firstChild.nodeValue;
        thisNode = thisNode.nextSibling;
    }
    countryListBox.setEnabled(true);
    countryListBox.setDataProvider(countryArray);
    countryListBox.setChangeHandler("getAirports", this);
}