Connecting flash to a c++ library

[kishore.s]

Hi,
We are thinking of using FLASH of FLASH lite to create the standalone HMI in a
powerful embedded linux system.
But we cant use Webservices to access the data since the requirement for the
response time
is very high in our project. So we wish to connect to the FLash HMI for data
access
directly from the C++ library (Not activex dll ).

Could we use External interface or Shared objects or any other technique to
get the activescript<->c++ connectivity?

also , Is there any vendor who has specialized in such data connectivities
with Flash?

[Fantomknight10]

have you found any answer about this one? it would be awesome if you could connect flash to c++. Thanks phim onlinehttp://coiphimhay.com, have a good time and let us know :)

[TimKemp]

I did this using sockets. You can create a TCP/IP connection between your C++
application and your Flash user interface. I generated a fairly complex
application with multiple Flash programs communicating with a single native
application.

I launched the flash interfaces from the C++ application and then monitored
the connections to synchronize the termination of the programs.

A big advantage I discovered is that the most OS specific piece of the code is
usually the user interface. I was able to recompile my C++ application on
different systems and it worked with no problems.

Once I had the initial communications working the rest was pretty easy. I
would share code with you, but I was working for someone else and don't own the
code.

- Tim

[kishore.s]

Hi Tim,
Thanks for the reponse. I also found only sockets as viable solution until now
for my needs.
I guess u might have used XML Socket api and just wondering how good was it
performance wise?
my concern is XMLSocket had a overhead of sending lot of text on network as
well as time marshalling and demarschalling the data.. so did you do any
performance test or you pretty happy with the results?

Also I thought to using XML-RPC where I can define the api in the higher
level and leave the packing and unpacking to xml format to the library.But this
also relies on XML Socket or HTTP for exchaning data ..so it has the same
concern as the later ,but I have less to work abt packing/unpacking data
in/from xml streams.


But none of them are my favourite.I had expected there is actionscript-c++
binding that would work on the fly.And im pretty dissapointed with the handful
options I have with Flash.

Regards,
Kishore

[TimKemp]

Kishore,

No I didn't use XML Sockets. I have used them in the past and was very
disappointed with them. They were extremely slow. For very small bits of
information they were OK, but when I sent more than a few hundred bytes it
would hang for tens of seconds (or more) apparently at random. I?ve heard that
they have corrected that in the new versions of Flash, but I still have a bad
feeling.

For the application I was working on I needed to transfer small bits of
information quickly. The Flash application was purely the user interface and
the native code was doing all the computation, so the communication had to be
fast enough that there wouldn?t be a noticeable lag to the user.

I used the Socket class in Flash with readUTF() and writeUTF() on the Flash
side. This lets you send strings containing any arbitrary information.
Handling UTF strings in the native code is simple. They have a 16 bit value at
the beginning followed by the number of bytes specified by the value. This was
very reliable and quick. I can?t recall having any problems with it once I
figured out how to make it work.

To bring up the combined ?Application?, I first launched the native code. The
native code opened a socket and listened on it and then it launched the Flash
pieces which connected to the socket. For synchronizing shutdown I just looked
for the connections closing down.

- Tim