Have an error on my Flash page

[Goat23]

I created a form on my page and it looks great, however when I go to test it and send my e-mail I get this warning:

Error opening URL "

http://www.cravinmusic.com/?Music= ...d+Back+Form&recipient=goat23@bored.com":

only local files supported in Test Movie

Yes I've not only tried it in Test Movie but also on my page itself.

 

[WhiteTiger]

What are you using to pass the variables?...ASP?
because I know ASP passing variables looks something like

[URL unfurl="true"]http://intranet/zrgen.asp?pnum=0852[/URL]

Regards,
AnthLOLny
----------------------------------------
The Learning process is just a way to get rid of all the stupids in your head.

Now where's that cute little kitten? :-X

 

[wangbar]

To test the movie and check out things like ASP or PHP script integration the test movie option doesn't work.

You'll need to publish the movie to your hard drive's wwwroot folder (if you're using Microsoft IIS that is, I'm not too familiar with the other web servers). The movie must be viewed in an active browser window to work properly, you can access it locally on your machine by following the path

http://localhost/yourmovie.html

.

 

[WhiteTiger]

Wangbar, he said he already tried it on the server.
Regards,
AnthLOLny
----------------------------------------
The Learning process is just a way to get rid of all the stupids in your head.

Now where's that cute little kitten? :-X

 

[wangbar]

What command are you using to send the form, Goat?

Is this a GetURL("mailto:....&quot kind of deal (you mentioned sending e-mail and your e-mail address is appended to the query string) or are you using loadVariables?

Are you doing any server side scripting to catch this stuff?

 

[Goat23]

Well i don't run my server, I have another place do that.
So I don't really know what's going on over there.
As you me, yes, I'm using loadVariables, other than that I still can't figure it out.

 

[wangbar]

What I meant by server side scripts was ASP or PHP scripts that you write yourself to handle data input from your site, these are published to the server in exactly the same way that you post HTML or .swf files, they just do all their work on the server rather than on the user's machine. Anyway, you're not using them so it's not a problem.

Here's a way to get your flash site's form input sent directly to your email address...

Attach the following script to your form's submit button:

on (release){
loadVariables("mailto:yourEmailAddress","","GET"
}

this grabs all the variables in your flash movie and launches the Email application on the user's machine simultaneously.

All you need is to have a couple of specific variables in your movie to make this work.

subject="Form input for www.cravinmusic.com"; (or whatever you want to appear in the email's subject line)

and

body=variable1+" "+variable2+" "+variable3; (or whatever the variables in your movie are called) this will show all of the variables from your form in the body of the email linked together with "+"s (although you could format this with newline characters etc. to make it more readable).

To make sure that the right variables are sent it's a good idea to add the "body=" line to the submit button's release state just before the loadVariables instruction.

Hope this makes sense, it's a bit of a work around but it avoids getting involved in loads of ASP scripting etc and the input drops right into your mailbox.

Remember to test this by saving it to your machine's webroot folder and to view it in an active window or you'll get "local file" errors again.

 

[wangbar]

Sorry meant to add this in to the last post - there's a function called "newline" which, if you add it into the "body=" variable string makes things much more readable...

body=var1+newline+var2+newline+var3; etc...

 

[Goat23]

Here's what I got in the actions part of my submit button:

On (Release)
Set Variable: "subject" = "Feed Back Form"
Set Variable: "recipient" = "goat23@bored.com"
Load Variables ("

http://www.cravinmusic.com",

1, vars=GET)
Go to and Play ("thankyou&quot
End On

 

[wangbar]

Try changing the Load Variables line to send to your email -

Load Variables("mailto:goat23@bored.com",1, vars=GET) (not 100% sure about the syntax as I never really used Flash 4)

- rather than directly to your site. As it stands your site seems to be sending the variables back to itself.

 

[WhiteTiger]

Now that I look at it, it looks like he doesn't have a handler on his server for whatever script he's trying to use or anything...it probably doesn't have anything to associate itself to...could this be possible?

Also, couldn't you post to something as an alternative...say, a script?
Regards,
AnthLOLny
----------------------------------------
The Learning process is just a way to get rid of all the stupids in your head.

Now where's that cute little kitten? :-X

 

[wangbar]

That's what I'm figuring about the server too - hence pointing everything towards an email address: it's an easy way to receive formatted text input.

Good point about the script though, Goat do you want me to knock up a quick ASP page for you so that you can direct the form variables somewhere other han your mail account?

 

[WhiteTiger]

I just kind of figure that he's using get to do this stuff...when he has no control over the server he is being hosted on, which could cause a lot of problems...with the get, he has to make sure things are set up correctly on the server...perhaps with POST he can use his own ASP page or some sort of a handler of his own, to resolve certian issues with his provider and the compatability of what he's trying to do.
Regards,
AnthLOLny
----------------------------------------
The Learning process is just a way to get rid of all the stupids in your head.

Now where's that cute little kitten? :-X

 

[wangbar]

Yeah, depends on how much data is being sent as well. I haven't seen the actual Flash form for the data entry but if there's a lot of text being transfered then POST is definitely the best option. It has the benefit of being more secure too as the transmitted variables aren't appended to the URL.

I've checked out the HTML cravinmusic site, what's the URL of the Flash one? It might give us few more clues on how to help.