We are running a Cumulus server to do a live voice and text chat.
The setting is that each client can post data to each other client in the same NetGroup via group.post(). Unfortunately, that function is extremely slow (half a second delay, at least), so we switched to using NetStream.send to call functions on other clients, passing the data through that. This works almost instantly.
However, we are now trying to build separate chat rooms, using different NetGroups. But when doing so, NetStream.send() doesn't work anymore, the functions are never called on the other clients, and no voice data is transferred. Basically, the whole publishing NetStream seems to be not working any more.
We have the following setup to establish a NetGroup and a publishing stream on each client:
var gspec:GroupSpecifier = new GroupSpecifier("Group1");
gspec.multicastEnabled = true;
gspec.postingEnabled = true;
gspec.serverChannelEnabled = true;
gspec.objectReplicationEnabled = true;
gspec.routingEnabled = true;
_group = new NetGroup(_netConnection, gspec.groupspecWithAuthorizations());
_group.addEventListener(NetStatusEvent.NET_STATUS, handleNetGroupStatus);
_sendStream = new NetStream(_netConnection, gspec.groupspecWithAuthorizations());
_sendStream.addEventListener(NetStatusEvent.NET_STATUS, handleNetStreamStatus);
_sendStream.client = this;
_sendStream.attachAudio(_mic);
_sendStream.publish("media");
And the following code is used to listen to the "media" stream:
case "NetGroup.Neighbor.Connect":
var netStream :NetStream = new NetStream(_netConnection, p_netStatusEvent.info.peerID);
netStream.addEventListener(NetStatusEvent.NET_STATUS, handleNetStreamStatus);
netStream.client = this;
netStream.play("media");
break;
The NetGroup connection itself works, and "NetGroup.Neighbor.Connect" is called on each client when a neighbor connects. But the _sendStream itself simply doesn't work. No data is received, no function called.
It does work when the publishing NetStream is constructed in the following way:
_sendStream = new NetStream(_netConnection, NetStream.DIRECT_CONNECTIONS);
However, we only want the NetStream to send to a single NetGroup, and according to the Adobe Documentation, using gspec.groupspecWithAuthorizations() in the constructor should allow exactly that.
Are we missing something here?
I found the answer:
You also have to make the receiving NetStream listen to gspec.groupspecWithAuthorizations() instead of p_netStatusEvent.info.peerID.
This does work. Unfortunately, this makes voice chat impossible, as it is incredibly slow (as slow as NetGroup.post()) and introduces many sound artifacts.
So, we'll have to find another solution for different chat rooms...
Related
I have built a complex AIR application which has been successfully running for quite some time of many PCs. Unfortunately, I have a plaguing problem with internet connectivity and I was wondering if anyone had encountered this issue before.
Every once in a while, the program will completely stop talking to the internet (all services start faulting). I wrote special code in my program to monitor the situation in which I use two different services to contact the same server.
The first service:
var req:URLRequest = new URLRequest("myURL.com");
this.urlMonitor = new URLMonitor(req, [200, 304]); // Acceptable status codes
this.urlMonitor.pollInterval = 60 * 1000; // Every minute
this.urlMonitor.addEventListener(StatusEvent.STATUS, onStatusChange);
this.urlMonitor.start();
private function onStatusChange(e:StatusEvent):void
{
if (this.urlMonitor.available)
{
pollStatusOnline = true;
Online = true;
}
else
{
pollStatusOnline = false;
Online = false;
}
}
The secondary method is a normal HTTP Service call:
checkInService = new HTTPService();
checkInService.method = "POST";
checkInService.addEventListener(ResultEvent.RESULT,sendResult);
checkInService.addEventListener(FaultEvent.FAULT, faultResult);
checkInService.addEventListener(InvokeEvent.INVOKE, invokeAttempt);
checkInService.url = "myURL.com";
checkInService.concurrency = Concurrency.LAST;
checkInService.send(params);
These two services point to the same location and work 98% of the time. Sometimes, after a few hours, I have noticed that both services no longer can connect to the website. The HTTP Service returns a StatusCode 0. I am able to open command prompt and ping the server directly with no problem from the PC which is failing. The services will not function again until the program is restarted.
I have been working on this issue for many months now without resolution. If anyone is able to even point me in a somewhat possible, maybe this might be the problem, possibly, direction, I would really appreciate it.
Thank you in advance.
Check the code value of the StatusEvent you receive from the URLMonitor - this might give more info than the HTTPService (you might also want to try passing a null value to URLMonitor constructor, to widen the acceptable status codes).
If you have access to the server(s?) in question, check their logs. Could the server config have changed such that it might now consider such frequent requests as flooding?
You should also be able to use an HTTP debugger like Fiddler or Charles on the client machine to see more information about the requests going out of your application.
I have an Adobe Air desktop app that was used for an event recently that thousands of people used simultaneously started getting failed network checks when using google.com as a polling URL. Having each app checking every 3 seconds to that URL, about 10 minutes into the event every app started being redirected to a validation page on Google asking the user to prove they aren't a robot which obviously they couldn't see and therefore all users were told they had no internet. I am already using Akamai's Advanced Streaming plugin (which is based on OSMF [which uses NetStream]) for the video streaming. Is there a better way to check for a network connection (preferably just using the existing NetStream object).
Here is the existing code for the network monitor:
public function checkNetwork(url:String):void {
var urlRequest:URLRequest = new URLRequest(url);
urlRequest.method = "GET";
urlMonitor = new URLMonitor(urlRequest);
urlMonitor.addEventListener(StatusEvent.STATUS,onStatusChange);
urlMonitor.pollInterval = 3000;
urlMonitor.start();
}
private function onStatusChange(event:StatusEvent):void {
if(urlMonitor.available) {
isNetworkDown = false;
dispatchEvent(new Event("NetworkManager.NETWORK_UP"));
}
else {
isNetworkDown = true;
dispatchEvent(new Event("NetworkManager.NETWORK_DOWN"));
}
}
I don't think polling a remote URL is the best way to check for internet connectivity (At least every 3 seconds). AIR has the ability to check the network itself like so:
air.NativeApplication.nativeApplication.addEventListener(air.Event.NETWORK_CHANGE, onNetworkChange);
function onNetworkChange(event)
{
//Check resource availability
}
The Event.NETWORK_CHANGE event does not indicate a change in all
network activity, but only that a network connection has changed. AIR
does not attempt to interpret the meaning of the network change.
http://help.adobe.com/en_US/AIR/1.5/devappshtml/WS5b3ccc516d4fbf351e63e3d118666ade46-7fcc.html
With that said, I would put your polling request inside the onNetworkChange event that way it checks only when necessary.
I have created a Jar that I want to fill with fireflies, depending on how many users are online.
I did a little digging and I found how to create a XMLSocket. It worked but I didn't know how to get the information how many people are online and also it required a CMD window to run all the time.
The second way I found was trough a PHP,MYSQL witch I have runing with my Apache server, but the tutorials and scripts I found did not work for me, for example. I did not create the required tables.
My question is what is the simplest way to find the current count of users online on your page/flash file? Is there a quick way to do it inside flash and not get involved with MYSQL or PHP?
No, there is not a simple way to only do it in Flash without using any external part (PHP, MySQL, Java, and more...). Remember that Flash is run locally, and thus needs to interact with PHP or similar to interact with the server to tell the server about the activity by the user and to ask the server about other users activities (number of users online).
If you only want to display the users online, I recommend the way that is shown in the example you posted. Simply update the database when activity has been seen by a user and count the user as offline when no activity has been seen for x minutes. There's no need to involve XMLSockets for this unless you want the users to interact with each other in any way.
If you want more than just displaying the users online, I recommend using XMLSockets in ActionScript and looking into PHP Sockets.
i dont think so, the flash player must need a way to "check" on the server the number of users who are online. the simplest would be to send a URLRequest (i hope i got the class name right) to a server script, which could be either a php or an aspx (or any server technology) script / page.
that server script should return the number of users the site has.
e.g.
var numberOfVisitors:Int = 0;
function onLoaded(e:Event):void {
numberOfVisitors = e.target.data;
// now print this 'numberOfVisitors' where you want to on the client
}
var numVisitors:URLLoader = new URLLoader();
numVisitors.addEventListener(Event.COMPLETE, onLoaded);
numVisitors.load(new URLRequest("num_users.php"));
the next part would be a php script (or any other server script) that keeps track of the number of users. that i think you should post as another SO question perhaps?
I got it to work, but I hat to link the php file not trough it's HTTP address, instead just the path relative to the .swf file (just myFile.php or path/myFile.php).
AS3 file:
NewRequest = new URLRequest("numOnline.php");
var numberOfVisitors:int = 10;
var NewRequest:URLRequest;
var UrlLoader:URLLoader;
UrlLoader = new URLLoader();
UrlLoader.dataFormat = URLLoaderDataFormat.TEXT;
UrlLoader.addEventListener(Event.COMPLETE, onLoaded);
UrlLoader.load(NewRequest);
function onLoaded(e:Event):void {
trace(e.target.data);
numberOfVisitors = int(e.target.data);
}
I convert the text As3 receives to int, because i don't know yet how to send veria
php files
main PHP file (the file that as3 connects to):
<?php
include_once 'config.php'; //This file would contain the variables needed to connect to the database with $link, below
include_once 'functions.php'; //We include the functions we have created
$database = "online";
$link = mysql_connect($server, $db_user, $db_pass)or die ("Could not connect to mysql because ".mysql_error());
mysql_select_db($database)or die ("Could not select database because ".mysql_error());
usersOnline(5); //We call the usersOnline function with a time span of 5 minutes
showUsersOnline(1); //Show the number of users online, and the list of users
mysql_close($link);
?>
the function file sends the number of Visiters Online with echo $count;
Yes, you can do it without a database (MYSQL) and PHP; BUT you will still need a (Media) Server.
I wouldn't suggest the following if your "only" purpose is to count the connecting clients, but if you have the reasons and have access to a Flash Media Server, you can try the following:
On Server Side:
Create an application (folder) on FMS, create the main.asc file inside that folder.
Inside the main.asc; create a (remote) SharedObject (server-side) (e.g.: users_so)
Watch for connecting clients on application.onConnect event. Add each connecting client to that SharedObject inside this handler.
Also watch for disconnecting clients on application.onDisconnect event. Remove each disconnecting client from the SharedObject inside this handler.
On Client Side:
Connect each Flash client to FMS (with your new app-folder path in the URI) when the application loads in the browser.
Watch for the NetStatusEvent.NET_STATUS event and "NetConnection.Connect.Success" code. When connected; create a SharedObject (client-side) and get the remote from the server.
Add the SyncEvent.SYNC event listener to the SharedObject. This will sync with each Flash client when a user connects or disconnects from the server.
Inside the sync event handler, get and count the users from the event response.
Display the count on your Flash client.
See Server-Side ActionScript Language Reference for Flash Media Server 4.5, especially the Application Class.
Also useful: Flash Media Server Developer Center
Hope this helps.
We are using a Cumulus server as our RTMFP server to implement a voice chat.
The voice streaming with NetStreams works perfectly fine almost no delay here, but we also want to transfer the activity level of the microphone of each member of the NetGroup.
So we tried transferring the data using NetGroup.post(data). That worked well, but had a delay of ~500ms even when testing with multiple clients on the same machine!
Obviously, half a second in microphone activity is just waaay to much delay to display it in any way.
Now we are trying to use direct routing with NetGroup.sendToAllNeighbors(, but it simply does nothing. I have read all the documentation on it and normally a NetGroup status event with "NetGroup.SendTo.Notify" should be triggered on the receiving clients. Instead, nothing happens.
Here is the code, which is called each frame:
var tsObject :TimestampedObject = new TimestampedObject();
tsObject.timestamp = (new Date()).getTime();
tsObject.sender = _netConnection.nearID;
tsObject.object = _mic.activityLevel;
_netGroup.sendToAllNeighbors(tsObject);
I know each frame is a bit much, but for now it is just a test case.
What are we doing wrong? As I said, voice communication itself works fine. As does Netgroup.post(data), which is just way too slow to use for this use case.
I'm building an online radio player using the AS3 code below:
private var soundChannel:SoundChannel;
private var stationUrl:String = "h t t p : / /205.188.215.230:8002/";
sound = new Sound();
sound.addEventListener(Event.ID3, onID3Change);
sound.load(new URLRequest(stationUrl));
soundChannel = sound.play();
private function onID3Change(e:Event):void
{
....
}
the sound plays successfully, but the problem is that the ID3 event is never triggered!
Does anyone know how to solve this?
ID3 doesn't exist in internet radio streams like this one. I am assuming you're talking about a SHOUTcast/IceCast stream.
For that, you need to implement the icy metadata protocol. For Flash, this is generally just done externally.
See this reference: http://www.smackfu.com/stuff/programming/shoutcast.html
Basically, you send icy-metadata: 1 in the headers of your GET request. The server then inserts metadata right into the middle of the stream, which you pull out before sending the data on to whatever is playing the stream. I'm not sure if this is even possible in Flash, but it certainly is possible to do this in PHP (or any server-side language really) and have your Flash application make a request to your PHP script to get that metadata.