INTRODUCTION

In this tutorial we will analyze the most important aspects of the server side programming using Actionscript with SmartFoxServer PRO. It is required that you are already familiar with the basic client-side concepts found in the previous articles, so if you think something is not clear yet, we reccomend to review those topics before proceeding.

EXTENSIONS IN A NUTSHELL

Basically an extension has four different tasks to accomplish:

1) Initialize
2) Handle client requests
3) Handle internal server events
4) Destroy

These four tasks are handled respectively by four Actionscript functions called: init(), handleRequest(), handleInternalEvent(), destroy(). These four functions should always be declared in your extensions, even if they don't contain code. If only one of them is missing, SmartFoxServer PRO will throw an error and it will refuse to load that extension.

With that said the simplest extension possible would look like this:

// The simplest extension possible

function init()
{
        // Initialization code goes here
}

function destroy()
{
        // Here we release resources before the extension is destroyed
}

function handleRequest(cmd, params, user, fromRoom)
{
        // Here we handle client requests
}

function handleInternalEvent(evtObj)
{
        // Code for handling server events goes here
}

» The init() method is called as soon as the extension is loaded, so you can put all your initialization code there.

» The destroy() function is called when an extension is going to be destroyed by the server: for example if you are reloading it from the Administrator Tool or if the server is being restarted. It's very important to use this method to clear the setInterval(s) you have created previously.

» The handleRequest() function takes four parmaters:

» The handleInternalEvent() is responsible for taking care of server events (user join, user exit, login, etc.).
The server calls this method in your extension by passing an object with a name property that identifies the type of event being sent. You can learn more about the types of event in the Server-side Actionscript API section of the SmartFoxServer documentation.

This is the list of the server events:

This is the basic architecture of an extension. The next articles of this "pro" series will guide you through the many possibilities of the server side extensions.