Hi Arbogast,

Have you seen ming. A C library interface to flash with a Perl interface. ( Does that sound right!?)

NAME
       SWF: an autoloadable interface module for Ming - a library for 
+generat-
       ing SWF ("Flash") format movies.
                                                                      
+              
SYNOPSIS
        # Don't import other modules
        use SWF;
        or use SWF();
                                                                      
+              
        # import all SWF modules
        use SWF qw(:ALL);
                                                                      
+              
        # import SWF::Shape and SWF::Movie only.
        use SWF qw(Shape Movie);
                                                                      
+              
DESCRIPTION
       By default, SWF doesn't import other SWF classes. You may, howe
+ver,
       instruct SWF to import all modules by using the following synta
+x:
 
                   use SWF qw(:ALL);
 
METHODS
       SWF::setScale($scale);
           Sets scale to $scale.
                                                                      
+              
       SWF::setVersion($version);
           Sets SWF version. Only versions 4 and 5 are currently suppo
+rted.
                                                                      
+              
AUTHOR
       Soheil Seyfaie (soheil@netcom.ca).
                                                                      
+              
SEE ALSO
       SWF, SWF::Action, SWF::Button, SWF::Action, SWF::Bitmap, SWF::B
+utton,
       SWF::DisplayItem, SWF::Fill, SWF::Font, SWF::Gradient, SWF::Mor
+ph,
       SWF::Movie, SWF::Shape, SWF::Sound, SWF::Sprite, SWF::Text,
       SWF::TextField.
[download]

Hope this helps

thinker

the loadVariables ("url" ,level/"target" [, variables]) method in Actionscript can be used to pull information from environmental variables. I'm not sure if Flash could handle binary information like a .jpg file with this method, but i imagine you could use this to save information to a file and pass the filename to the script with loadVariables.

Flash has native XML handling in the latest version, look at the XML object that provides XML.send, XML.load, and XML.sendAndLoad methods, I've never used that feature, but I imagine there are examples on the net on the proper way to send XML over HTTP in flash.

With the proviso that I know next-to-nothing about Flash, presumably you can use exactly the same mechanism to communicate locally as you do with a webserver. If your perl program uploads files to the server's filesystem ready to be read by Flash and vice-versa, you can simply write out to local files instead. If you're using sockets to communicate(?!), then the process will be the same as it is already, but replacing the remote port with a local one.

Cheers, Ben.

Thanks Ben. I am guessing I should carefully read Network Progamming in Perl by Lincoln Stein??? Sounds like I have a doable problem.

On Ming, I have used Ming, it is good. But, the version I have only covers through Flash 5, and it isn't complete I believe. Plus, it doesn't have a nice graphical tool to use Ming.



Title edit by tye