Actionscript Cookbook

17.6. Broadcasting Data to Remote Shared Object Clients

Problem

You want to send data to all the clients of a FlashCom application that are connected to a remote shared object.

Solution

Use the SharedObject.onSync( ) method to catch synchronization events, and use the SharedObject.send( ) method to broadcast messages without writing to the RSO.

Discussion

Every time the server-side data for a remote shared object changes, FlashCom attempts to synchronize the client-side data for all clients connected to that RSO. The SharedObject.onSync( ) method for a client-side remote shared object is automatically invoked whenever a synchronization attempt has occurred, so you can monitor all synchronization events. (See more on this in Recipe 16.8.) This is useful in situations in which a relatively small amount of data is shared among multiple clients. Whenever one client makes a change, all the other clients are automatically notified. The onSync( ) method works the same regardless of whether the remote shared object is persistent.

You can also manually invoke a client-side method on all clients connected to a remote shared object by using the SharedObject.send( ) method, and you can call the send( ) method from either a server-side or client-side remote shared object. In either case, the send( ) method requires that you specify the name of the method to invoke on the client(s). You should then ensure that the client movies have a method with that same name defined for the client-side remote ...