ActionScript for Flash MX: The Definitive Guide, Second Edition

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Creating a Flash Fill-in Form

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application must identify and return the share price. While the movie is waiting, you

should display a “Loading” message. When the share price is received (i.e., once the

data finishes loading), Flash triggers the target LoadVars object’s onLoad() handler,

where we can interpret the data and display it to the user. (Data received via

LoadVars.sendAndLoad() is stored in the target LoadVars object.)

The Flash form cycle is complete, and we’re free to do whatever we like with our pre-

cious, well-traveled bytes of content. Now let’s put our knowledge to practice by cre-

ating a simple fill-in form.

Creating a Flash Fill-in Form

This example demonstrates how to send a single text field variable from Flash to a

Perl script, named echo.pl, and how to receive a response from echo.pl in Flash. The

movie we’ll build consists of an interface and two functions—initForm() and

submitForm(). The interface includes an input text field, a Submit button, and a

movie clip that displays echo.pl’s response. The initForm() function creates the server

communication objects that send our variable between Flash and echo.pl. The

submitForm() function formats the data and sends it to echo.pl. For simplicity, our

code is attached to frame 1 of the scripts layer. In practice,