loading BLOB data from DB into Flash

glueater

I have sound files and pictures stored in a mysql database and want to load these into a Flash movie dynamically (im creating a preview player to allow customers to "try before they buy" and therefore cant put the stuff in a http password protected directory...or can i?) Is this possible? I've tried a bunch of different ways to pass it through using PHP, but nothing seems to work...for instance:

<?php $file = @mysql_result($row_Audio['MP3File'],0,"bin_data");

and then embeding the $file variable into the FlashVars and using a simple sound load in actionscript within flash, but in order for that to work, the Flash variable has to be a url....it works fine when the file is stored in a directory on the server, but i need to pass it straight from the db...i've also tried to combine the above with

copy($file,"user/$file_name");

to pass it through where FlashVars="soundtoplay=user/file_name" with no success....

Any ideas?

AstroTeg

Hmm... personally, I'd leave the music file data out of MySQL and just store it in a protected directory. If your server allows you, I'd even put them one directory above your site's root directory and in theory, no one could get to the files.

But to make this work and to make Flash happy (which is your current problem), is you need to setup a PHP page to act as a proxy. The idea is when you're ready to access one of your music files, you'll need to specify this PHP page and pass it the proper set of parameters which will tell the PHP page which file you wish to play. The PHP page then goes to the file (either in a secure directory or the database) and retrieves the data. It will need to figure out what type of file it is so it sends back the proper content type. Then will need to send it back (echo or print should do).

Essentially, you're setting up the PHP page to mimic a music file. As far as Flash or a browser is concerned, its a music file with a PHP extension (and if you wanted to get really fancy, you could use mod-rewrite to fix that too).