Recipe 14.15 Tracking Clients Connected to the Application

14.15.1 Problem

You want to keep track of all the clients connected to the FlashCom application.

14.15.2 Solution

Use the server-side application.clients property.

14.15.3 Discussion

Server-Side ActionScript (for FlashCom) includes a built-in, application-wide property named application.clients, which is an array of all the connected client objects.

This example defines a custom getUserInfo( ) method, for each client, which returns information about the clients connected to the application:

// Create an application.onConnect(  ) method. This example assume that when the client
// connects, a username parameter is passed along.
application.onConnect = function (newClient, username) {
  
  // Accept the connection to the new client.
  application.acceptConnection(newClient);

  // Add the username to the client object as a custom property.
  newClient.username = username;

  // Define a custom getUserInfo(  ) method for the client object. This method can then
  // be called from the client.
  newClient.getUserInfo = function (  ) {

    // Create a new array, loop through all the connected clients in
    // application.clients and add the usernames to the array.
    var clients_ar = new Array(  );
    for (var i = 0; i < application.clients.length; i++) {
      clients_ar.push(application.clients[i].username);
    }
    // Return the array of usernames.
    return clients_ar;
  };
};