ActionScript for Flash MX: The Definitive Guide, Second Edition

This is the Title of the Book, eMatter Edition

Copyright © 2007 O’Reilly & Associates, Inc. All rights reserved.

Creating a Flash Fill-in Form

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The formInput property of the dataSender object contains the data to be transmit-

ted—the current input of the

input_txt text field, escaped (encoded) for safe net-

work transfer:

dataSender.formInput = escape(input_txt.text);

While the user waits for echo.pl to respond to our form submission, the code dis-

plays a loading message in the

response clip:

form_mc.response.gotoAndStop("loading");

For testing purposes, we display the data to be sent in the Output window, using the

toString() method:

trace("Sending " + dataSender.toString( ));

Finally, we submit the form using sendAndLoad(), instead of send() or load(),

because we’re both sending variables to, and receiving variables from, echo.pl. The

sendAndLoad() method sends

formInput (and any other dataSender properties) to

echo.pl:

dataSender.sendAndLoad("http://www.yourserver.com/cgi-bin/echo.pl",

dataReceiver, "GET");

The sendAndLoad() method takes three parameters: url (the location of the server

script),

targetObject (the LoadVars object that should receive the results), and

method (the HTTP method, either “GET” or “POST”). When sendAndLoad() exe-

cutes,

dataSender’s properties are converted to a single ampersand-delimited string of

variable name/value pairs and sent to echo.pl.

The Perl Script, echo.pl

When ...