13.3 Shockwave/Flash

You can also create full-featured SWF-format Flash movies with the Ming extension. Example 13-3 produces a movie with a blue circle in it that you can drag around.

Example 13-3. Generating a Flash movie

// Use SWF Version 6 to enable Actionscript
ming_UseSwfVersion(6);

// Create a new movie and set some parameters
$movie = new SWFMovie( );
$movie->setRate(20.000000);
$movie->setDimension(550, 400);
$movie->setBackground(0xcc,0xcc,0xcc);

// Create the circle
$circle = new SWFShape( );
$circle->setRightFill(33,66,99);
$circle->drawCircle(40);
$sprite= new SWFSprite( );
$sprite->add($circle);
$sprite->nextFrame( );

// Add the circle to the movie
$displayitem = $movie->add($sprite);
$displayitem->setName('circle');
$displayitem->moveTo(100,100);

// Add the Actionscript that implements the dragging
$movie->add(new SWFAction("
 circle.onPress=function( ){ this.startDrag('');};
 circle.onRelease= circle.onReleaseOutside=function( ){ stopDrag( );};
"));

// Display the movie
header("Content-type: application/x-shockwave-flash");
$movie->output(1);

Save Example 13-3 as ming.php and then reference it from another page as in Example 13-4.

Example 13-4. Including the Flash movie in a web page

<OBJECT classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000"
 codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.
cab#version=6,0,0,0"
 WIDTH="300" HEIGHT="300">
 <PARAM NAME=movie VALUE="ming.php">
 <PARAM NAME=bgcolor VALUE="#ffffff"> 
 <EMBED src="ming.php" bgcolor="#ffffff" WIDTH="300" HEIGHT="300"
 TYPE="application/x-shockwave-flash" PLUGINSPAGE="http://www.macromedia.com/go/
getflashplayer"></EMBED>
</OBJECT>

Read about the Ming functions in the PHP Manual at http://www.php.net/ming. The Ming extension depends on the external Ming library, which you can download from http://ming.sourceforge.net. The site at http://ming.sourceforge.net also contains lots of documentation and examples of how to use Ming from PHP. (Example 13-3 is adapted from one of the examples on that site.)