Retrieving Information from MySQL via PHP to AS3 - php

Question

I am currently doing a tutorial which was found on TutsPlus.
This tutorial was to save information from AS3 to MySQL via PHP and then retrieve this information.
So far, it works. I Can enter a username and score, which saves to the database. There is one problem though, I would like to be able to display ALL the names and scores in a table, instead of having to search for a name and then finding the score for that specific user.
The code in which the information is saved (which works), is below.
package {
import flash.display.*;
import flash.events.*;
import flash.net.*;
public class register extends MovieClip {
public function register ():void {
register_button.buttonMode = true;
register_button.addEventListener(MouseEvent.MOUSE_DOWN, checkForm);
username_text.text = "";
userbio_text.text = "";
}
public function checkForm (e:MouseEvent):void {
if (username_text.text != "" && userbio_text.text != "") {
sendForm();
} else {
result_text.text = "PLEASE ENTER A NAME";
}
}
public function sendForm ():void {
/*
we use the URLVariables class to store our php variables
*/
var phpVars:URLVariables = new URLVariables();
phpVars.username = username_text.text;
phpVars.userbio = userbio_text.text;
/*
we use the URLRequest method to get the address of our php file and attach the php vars.
*/
var urlRequest:URLRequest = new URLRequest("localhost/php/register.php");
/*
the POST method is used here so we can use php's $_POST function in order to recieve our php variables.
*/
urlRequest.method = URLRequestMethod.POST;
/*
this attaches our php variables to the url request
*/
urlRequest.data = phpVars;
/*
we use the URLLoader class to send the request URLVariables to the php file
*/
var urlLoader:URLLoader = new URLLoader();
urlLoader.dataFormat = URLLoaderDataFormat.VARIABLES;
/*
runs the function once the php file has spoken to flash
*/
urlLoader.addEventListener(Event.COMPLETE, showResult);
/*
we send the request to the php file
*/
urlLoader.load(urlRequest);
}
/*
function to show result
*/
public function showResult (e:Event):void {
result_text.text = "" + e.target.data.result_message;
}
}
}
From here, I can go to another application and search the users name, and then displays that users score. Code below:
package actions {
import flash.display.MovieClip;
import flash.events.*;
import flash.net.*;
import flash.text.*;
public class main extends MovieClip {
public function main ():void {
submit_button.buttonMode = true;
submit_button.addEventListener(MouseEvent.MOUSE_DOWN, checkLogin);
username.text = "";
}
public function checkLogin (e:MouseEvent):void {
if (username.text == "") {
username.text = "Enter your username";
}
else {
processLogin();
}
}
public function processLogin ():void {
var phpVars:URLVariables = new URLVariables();
var phpFileRequest:URLRequest = new URLRequest("http://xx.xx.xx.uk/~bf93fv/Source%202/php/controlpanel.php");
phpFileRequest.method = URLRequestMethod.POST;
phpFileRequest.data = phpVars;
var phpLoader:URLLoader = new URLLoader();
phpLoader.dataFormat = URLLoaderDataFormat.VARIABLES;
phpLoader.addEventListener(Event.COMPLETE, showResult);
phpVars.systemCall = "checkLogin";
phpVars.username = username.text;
phpLoader.load(phpFileRequest);
}
public function showResult (event:Event):void {
result_text.autoSize = TextFieldAutoSize.LEFT;
result_text.text = "" + event.target.data.systemResult;
}
}
}
The controlpanel.php file, which displays the username and score individually is below:
<?php
include_once "connect.php";
$username = $_POST['username'];
if ($_POST['systemCall'] == "checkLogin") {
$sql = "SELECT * FROM users WHERE username='$username'";
$query = mysql_query($sql);
$login_counter = mysql_num_rows($query);
if ($login_counter > 0) {
while ($data = mysql_fetch_array($query)) {
$userbio = $data["user_bio"];
print "systemResult=$username Scored $userbio";
}
}
else {
print "systemResult=The login details dont match our records.";
}
}
?>
Does anybody know any easy way in order to view ALL the information from the database into a table?

Answer 1

There are few things you might want to improve in your PHP code (your AS3 is better).
Use PDO instead of the functions that work with particular DBMS. The reason to this is that it is portable (to an extend). Say, if you wanted to ever move the database from MySQL to Postgres, you'd had to rewrite less of your code, then you would have to otherwise. PDO also provides some means of sanitizing the input. It's not bullet proof - still better then nothing. PDO is considered the "good practice", so you would learn to write the good code right away instead of making that journey from writing newby-style code at first and then discovering how to actually do it properly. It might be just a little bit more verbose if you are thinking about a very primitive task such as a single select, but as soon as your task becomes just a little bit more complex it becomes all worth the time.
In your SQL queries make a general rule never to use select *, unless for testing / debugging. That's sort of laziness that in the end will cost you a lot of problems. By doing so you will make it very difficult to maintain your code later, effectively transforming it into "write once - run away" kind of thing. Again, as a simple proof of concept it is OK, - long-term solution - bad. If you are still blur on what I'm trying to say: list all column names explicitly.
Using include / require and their _once family is a bad idea as a long-term solution. Again, OK for a simple test - bad in the long run. Good programs are written in functions / classes and use __autoload() or a framework that uses the ability to load classes automatically. This makes larger applications more manageable, easier to navigate and understand then the web of includes.
You must sanitize input from the user of your web application, that is don't do $_POST['key']. At least write the function that will both check that the key exists and that it is of an expected format.
Now, your actual problem, sending the data.
You can just send the raw SQL output you get in PHP - will spare your server the problem of re-encoding all of it. Works in the very simple cases, but it becomes more complex with more complex tasks. This is also uncommon to do, so you will find that people will not know how to handle that. (No technical restriction, it is just really a historical artefact).
There are a bunch of popular formats that can be digested by variety of applications, not necessary Flash. Those include XML, JSON, Protobuf. There are also some more particular to PHP like the one produced from serialize(). I'd urge you to stick to JSON if you go down this route. XML might be a more mature technology, but JSON has a benefit of the basic type system built in (while in XML it is yet another layer on top of it, which is, beside other things is not implemented in Flash - I'm talking about XSL).
There's AMF (ActionScript Message Format) - it is ideal for Flash. PHP also knows very well how to produce it (there are several popular implementations out there). This format is a lot more compact compared to JSON or XML. It has more expressive power (can describe circular dependencies, many-to-many relationships, has a procedure for introducing custom types, custom [de]serialization routines). It is also self-describing, unless you used custom serialization routine. This is the best option if you aren't planning on moving your application to JavaScript later, because JavaScript has problems consuming binary data. Parsing this format would not be possible there.
Protobuf is a viable option too. This is a data exchange format designed by Google. It is similar in spirit to AMF, however it may not be self-describing. It relies on the application to know how to produced custom objects from it. It has, however, a form, that can be parsed in JavaScript (although you'd lose the the compactness benefit).
Your ActionScript code: If you opt for AMF, you'd need to look into NetConnection class. I'd advise you to take a look in AMFPHP project - it also has examples. Alternatively, Zend Framework has Zend_Amf library to be used for that purpose. But using the entire framework may be overwhelming at start.
If you go with XML - then there's a built-in XML class, there are millions of examples on the web on how to use it.
If you go with JSON, then since not so long ago there's a built-in class for that too. But before there was one, there were several libraries to parse it.
There used to be a project on GoogleCode for Protobuf support in Flash, but it required quite a bit of acquittance and manual labour to get going.
Finally, index of things mentioned here:
http://php.net/manual/en/book.pdo.php - PDO
http://php.net/manual/en/function.json-encode.php - JSON in PHP
http://php.net/manual/en/book.dom.php - XML in PHP (There is no agreement on which XML library is better if PHP is considered. I'd probably stick to this, but ymmv).
http://www.silexlabs.org/amfphp/ - AMF in PHP
http://framework.zend.com/manual/1.12/en/zend.amf.html Zend_Amf library
http://code.google.com/p/protobuf-actionscript3/ Protobuf in ActionScript
https://github.com/drslump/Protobuf-PHP PHP Protobuf (sorry, never used this one, but looks fine)
http://www.blooddy.by/en/crypto/ for older versions of Flash player - this library has the best JSON decoder I know of.

Answer 2

The best way is (I think) to use XML.
On the PHP side, the script output an XML document with all the users :
$sql = "SELECT * FROM users "; // add order statement if needed
$query = mysql_query($sql);
$login_counter = mysql_num_rows($query);
$xml = array('<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><users>');
if ($login_counter > 0) {
while ($data = mysql_fetch_array($query)) {
$xml[] = '<user name="'.$data['username'].'" bio="'.$data["user_bio"].'" />';
}
}
else {
// do nothing
// you will handle it on the flash side by checking the length of user nodes list
}
$xml[] = '</users>';
header('Content-Type:text/xml');
die(implode('', $xml));
This will output an XML document :
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<users>
<user name="..." bio="..." />
<user name="..." bio="..." />
[...]
</users>
(There are class on PHP like SimpleXML to deal with XML in a cleaner way)
AS Side :
You can easily browse / display the data on the flash side with the help of the XML / XMLList class
Just adapt the URLLoaderDataFormat to TEXT and convert the data to XML in the complete event handler :
var xml:XML = new XML(event.target.data);
Then iterate the user elements to display them :
var users:XMLList = xml.user;
var user:XML;
for (user in users) {
trace('name->' + user.attribute('name') );
trace('bio->' + user.attribute('bio') );
}