Webmaster Forum / Flash / Data Integration / January 2007

There is a good tutorial of XMLsockets interacting with Php at  
http://www.kirupa.com/developer/flash8/php5sockets_flash8_3.htm.

But, like all XMLSocket tutorials I've seen it distributes server-bound
messages to all connected clients. My needs are much simpler: I just want to
write data to connected sockets periodically.

I've tried this by starting with the tutorial code. I've left the Flash code
exactly the same and simplified the Php code as shown below. BTW, I use Flash
8, Php v. 5.1.4 and the original tutorial code itself works fine.

The result of my changes is that I get the sockets set up (i.e. both the Flash
OnConnect and the Php Activate say it is set up. When I write to Flash from
Php, the code SAYS its succesful. But, I never see any text in the Flash app,
nor is OnData ever triggered. Please tell me what silly thing I am doing:

#!/usr/bin/php -q
<?php
error_reporting(E_ALL);
set_time_limit(0);
ob_implicit_flush();
$address = "xx.xx.xx.xx";   //the ip address (and port) of the server- same as
indicated in client software
$port = "9xxx";

//---- Function to Send out Messages ----------------------------------------

function send_Message($client, $socket, $buf) {
$buf="<xml><title> this is the title </title></xml>";
$buf=$buf . '\u0000'; //I've also tried 0X00, NULL, "" and 0 as a terminator
$len = strlen($buf);
$numwrite=socket_write($client, "$socket wrote: $buf", $len);
print $numwrite . "\n";
print socket_strerror(socket_last_error()) . "\n"; //this is what tells me the
write "is considered" to be a success
}
//---- Start Socket creation for PHP 5 Socket Server
-------------------------------------
if (($master = socket_create(AF_INET, SOCK_STREAM, SOL_TCP)) < 0) {
echo "socket_create() failed, reason: " . socket_strerror($master) . "\n";
}
socket_set_option($master, SOL_SOCKET,SO_REUSEADDR, 1);

if (($ret = socket_bind($master, $address, $port)) < 0) {
echo "socket_bind() failed, reason: " . socket_strerror($ret) . "\n";
}

if (($ret = socket_listen($master, 5)) < 0) {
echo "socket_listen() failed, reason: " . socket_strerror($ret) . "\n";
}

//---- accept connect request from Flash app ---------------------
$currenttime=time();
$starttime=time();
if (($client = socket_accept($master)) < 0) {
echo "socket_accept() failed: reason: " . socket_strerror($msgsock) . "\n";
continue;
}
//---- Create Persistent Loop to write messages every 15 sec
---------------------
while (true) {

if (($currenttime - $starttime) > 15) {
send_Message($client, $client, "show this message" );
$currenttime=time();
$starttime=time();
} else {
$currenttime=time();
}
}

?>