This is an archive of a live discussion that I presented on Flash Communication Server best practices. Programming Flash Communication Server applications is not an easy task, but after you have built a few (or a few dozen), some patterns start to emerge. Learn these patterns and get a peek at the best practices that I use to build Breeze Meeting using Flash Communication Server.

What You Will Learn

In this session I will build a very simple shared text application, which uses a Remote Shared Objects to share the text amongst all the users connected to it. Using as many best practices as possible when building even a small application like this one will help you when it’s time to expand it and maintain its code six months later.

I thought it would be useful to give you a timeline showing some of the topics in this hour-long presentation. Here's an outline of what I covered, and the approximate time in the archive where it's covered:

Introduction

• Demo of the sample application (2:00)

Creating a FLA File

• Building an AS2-ready FLA and a Main class (3:00)
• 2-frame-timeline for a class (3:45)
• Keeping all of your code out of the FLA (5:00)
• Linkage name same as class name (including namespace) (6:05)

The main.as File

• Extending MovieClip versus extending Object (seek to 6:50)
• Importing * versus importing a single component (8:00)
• How to declare your variables (9:00)
• Keeping your z-layers organized (10:00)
• Public/private variables (11:00)
• Getters/setters (11:15)
• Typing everything, ECMA typing weirdness (12:15)
• Constructor (13:44)
• myTrace (14:15)
• Attaching UI components (15:00)
• No extra listener objects! (15:30)
• Your typical change/click handler (17:00)
• Use public/private on your function declarations (17:35)
• The perfect two-lines inline functions (19:00)
• p_, m_, and k_ prefixes (21:00)
• When to show and hide your UI elements (22:10 and again 40:00)
• Declaring your Shared Objects (SOs) and onSync methods (23:00)

Server-side

• What do to in onAppStart (26:00)
• Copy and paste SO names! (26:45)
• Setting default slots on the server-side properly (27:15)
• Assigning unique IDs on the server-side and why (30:10)
• onConnect and onDisconnect best practices (31:00)
• Calling setUserID right after acceptConnection (33:40)
• Using setUserID as your "ready-to-go" point (instead of NetConnection.Connect.Success) (34:30)
• Client.prototype.someFunc versus client.someFunc (37:30)
• Using SOs instead of .send() to accommodate for people who come in late (41:00)

Different multiuser sharing techniques (43:00)

• Understanding "success" versus"change" (46:00)
• MVC: having the server-side write to SOs (52:30)
• Securing your SO writes (53:00)
• Adding a tID to emulate a success (56:45)

Requirements

To complete this tutorial you will need to install the following software and files:

Tutorials and sample files:

• bestPractices.zip (ZIP, 112K)

Note: You can also find the source code within the presentation at 1:00:00.

• Watch the Breeze Seminar (Approximately one hour)

Figure 1. Extending MovieClip versus extending Object

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