Building an RSS Aggregator with Macromedia Firefly Components
Aral Balkan
BitsAndPixels
Table of Contents
Note: This tutorial is for users of Macromedia Firefly Components, which were available with Macromedia Flash MX Data Connection Kit. Macromedia Flash MX Professional 2004 includes data components that replace FireFly components. Find out about special offers on Macromedia MX 2004 for Data Connection Kit owners.
Introduction
With the release of Macromedia Flash MX Data Connection Kit, Macromedia has introduced a new set of data-aware components that are bound to make your life as a Rich Internet Applications developer much easier. To show you how much easier, this tutorial takes you through the steps of using Firefly Components, which is part of the Flash MX Data Connection Kit, to develop two small applications: A simple RSS (Rich Site Summary) reader that loads and displays an RSS file from your local file system and a slightly more complex RSS aggregator that displays feeds from multiple Macromedia Flash blogs. (You may be familiar with Macromedia Flash MX-related RSS aggregators such as Flog or Full As A Goog.)
If you're about to run away because you're dreading the onslaught of advanced ActionScript, take a deep breath and relax: The Firefly Components suite does nearly all of the work for us. We'll use very little ActionScript throughout the tutorial, even though we'll create some quite complex functionality.
Requirements
To complete this tutorial you will need to install the following software and files:
- Macromedia Flash MX
- Macromedia Flash MX Data Connection Kit (available for purchase)
Download the sample files (1,075 KB ZIP)Place these files into your working directory. The ZIP file contains all the files that are referenced in this tutorial.
- Download the sample code (TXT)
Note to Windows Internet Explorer users: Copy and paste sample code snippets from the sample code text file. Other users can copy the code directly from the tutorial web pages.
