read from a "text" file

[Ueliisa Wenger webforumsuser@macromedia.com]

Dear Everyone

I am a really beginner with Drirector. So I hope somewere can help me to have a better overwiew about start me projekt.

short dicription:
It should be like a "lexikon" you can choose in a list of words that you are searching or typ in a textfield and the list shows you "similar" Words and you can choose one. If you choosed you get more inforations to this word in different textfields and also you see a quicktime-movie to this word.

what I wish to do:
the nummer of the words, informations and the quicktime-movies can change: add, modify Informations, delete old ones (not in the Programm, but be the resarch-team) I want to read in the information, stored in text files (or database), from the file at runtime and link it (with a txtefile based list) to the video so that I can use one movie that change the quicktime and the text information if a user choose an other word in the list.

my question:
- I do not find any information how I can open and read from a textfile [or connect to a batabase] (and after that work with this data at "runtime")
Where I must looking for this functionality for filehandling?
Or is ther only the way of hardcoded links?
- Is it possible to save perferences/settings from a user so that he can use it by the next time?
where I can find this functions?

Dear ueliisa

[lefrog webforumsuser@macromedia.com]

Hi there you can use fileIO to import txt file

My text file contains this text and is save in the same folder as your movie but you can save it anywhere as long as you specify a path:

4-Orion,Enterprise,Titan,Harland Applicator

on prepareMovie
gFileObj = script("file handlers").new(the moviePath)
gFileObj.mImportTxtFile("cdContent.txt")
end

this is "file handler" parent script:

property pImportedTxt -- text imported from the txtfile
property pFileObj -- fileIO object
property pCDContentFilePath -- filepath to the cd content file

-- create an instance of the fileIO object and store the relevent file paths
on new me, txtFilePath
pFileObj = new(xtra "FileIO")
pTxtFilePath = txtFilePath
return me
end

-- import the file passed and call the appropriate method
on mImportTxtFile me, fileNamePassed
pFileObj.openFile(pTxtFilePath & fileNamePassed, 1)
pImportedTxt = pFileObj.readfile()
pFileObj.closeFile()
-- call the method to sort
me.mSortContentFile()
end

on mSortContentFile me
the itemDelimiter = "-"
-- sort out number of products and save it in our variable store object
numOfProducts = pImportedTxt.item[1]
put numOfProducts -- i.e 4
--
namesOfProducts = pImportedTxt.item[2]
the itemDelimiter = ","
noOfItems = the number of items in namesOfProducts
productList = []
repeat with i = 1 to noOfItems
productList.add(namesOfProducts.item)
end repeat
put productList -- ie ["Orion", "Enterprise", "Titan", "Harland Applicator"]
end

hope this helps some