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Business Directory Sample: Flash MX 2004 Professional with PHP and MySQL


Sajid Saiyed

Sajid Saiyed

blog.ssdesigninteractive.com

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction and Planning Your First Database Project
  2. Designing MySQL Tables
  3. Creating XML Files
  4. Creating PHP Files
  5. Creating Your Flash File
  6. Uploading and Testing
Created:
17 May 2004
User Level:
Intermediate

Integrating Macromedia Flash with databases wasn't easy—until Flash MX 2004 Professional. Using the Flash components that ship with the Flash MX 2004, you can very easily create dynamic and engaging Rich Internet Applications (RIA).

In this tutorial, you will connect a Flash user interface with a MySQL database using PHP scripting. The application you are going to develop is a business directory. This business directory has three sections: Choose Category, Choose Business, and View Details of the Business. You will be using the Flash MX 2004 UI and Data components to populate the content in the interface.

This article will not cover all Data components. It will use XMLConnector components, Dataset components, and a few UI components. For more information on other Data components, you can see following tutorials:

Note: This tutorial will also not go into detail about installing web servers and PHP. The following Developer Center tutorials that can help with this setup, depending on your platform:

You can find more details on required software in the following Requirements section.

Requirements

To complete this tutorial you will need to install the following software and files:

Flash MX 2004 Professional

A web server (like Apache)

PHP 4.2.3 (minimum)

MySQL 3.23.39 (minimum)

Tutorials and sample files:

Level of experience required: intermediate

  • Intermediate knowledge of creating and running movies using Flash MX 2004, including some experience with using components and data binding
  • Basic knowledge of XML
  • Basic knowledge of PHP
  • Basic knowledge of MySQL
  • Basic knowledge of uploading and testing files on a web server

Planning Your First Database Project

Good and thorough planning always saves development time. Before you start, understand and plan what you intend to create. In this tutorial, your aim is to develop a business directory, which will contain the following:

  • Categories

    • Business Listing

      • Business Name
      • Address
      • Telephone
      • Website
      • E-mail
      • Picture
      • Description

Think of your screen as divided into three vertical sections:

  • The first section on the left is a pop-up menu from which a user can select a category of business, for example, computers, automobiles, or clothing.
  • Once a user selects a category, a list of business names falling under that category displays in the middle section.
  • When a user selects a business name, the details of that business appear in the right section, for example business name, address, telephone, or e-mail.
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About the author

Sajid Saiyed is a manager of interactive design at Philips Design, Bangalore, India. Sajid has more than eight years of experience in the fields of interaction design, UI design, graphic design, product design, multimedia, e-learning and RIA development. He is self-taught, which you can infer from his Bachelor of Architecture degree. (He was supposed to be designing buildings!) Sajid also did a postgraduate research fellowship in New-Media at the National Institute of Design (NID) INDIA and was a visiting faculty member there. While not loaded with work, Sajid loves to participate in design competitions. He is a design freak and loves to design just about anything.