Programming with sockets seems to be an intimidating venture for many developers. However, with AS 3 and Node.js, it really isn’t too difficult. In this tutorial you will set up a simple socket server using Node.js and connect to it with a Flash-based client. When the project is complete, you’ll be able to see data being transmitted from Flash to the server and back to Flash again - Booyah!

Getting Started

To get started, you’ll first need to download Node.js. If you’re on a Windows box, you can get the download right here. If not, check out this wiki page for instructions on how to get it on your system. I wrote this tutorial on my Windows 7 machine, so the instructions will target that platform, though you can still follow along and use the appropriate paths on your own machine regardless of which platform you’re using.

Once you have downloaded the package, create a new directory named nodeJS on your C drive. You can extract the contents of the node.js package to this directory. If you want to test out the installation, go into the Node.js bin directory and create a new JavaScript file. Bring up any text editor (notepad is fine) and enter the text below; save the file as helloworld.js.

console.log("Hello, World!");

The actual Node program is a command-line based tool that will execute your javascript files. To run it, bring up the Windows command prompt.

1) hit the Windows key + r to bring up the Run box
2) type cmd in the box and hit enter

With the command window open, we need to navigate to the Node.js bin directory; that is where we saved our helloworld.js file. If you created a nodeJS directory on your C drive as I have done above then type the following in the command window:

cd C:\nodeJS\bin

If you created your directory in a different place, you’ll need to adjust the path accordingly. Now that we’re in the right place, we need to tell the Node program to execute our script. We can do this by issuing the command like so:

node helloworld.js

With any luck, you’ll see the words “Hello, World” printed out in the console window as shown below.

If everything worked, then you’re ready to move on. If not, try repeating the steps and make sure you’ve installed Node.js in the right place.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, May 22nd, 2011 at 2:13 pm and is filed under ActionScript 3, Tutorials. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.