Sometimes you will need to debug your flash application when its running live, for example if you are using server side scripts that are giving an Xml Response etc.

There is a way to output this information to a text, so you can have trace("Testing Response:" + myVariable); etc

1. You have to uninstall the original flash player you hav

2. Download the Debugger Version of Flash (You can get this on the Adobe Website)

3. For Windows XP add a file called mm.cfg to your X:\Documents and Settings\(UserName)

Inside the file add the following lines:

MaxWarnings=0
ErrorReportingEnable=1
TraceOutputFileEnable=1

4. You will then be able to find the output in the file  X:\Documents and Settings\(UserName)\Application Data\Macromedi\Flash Player\Logos\flashlog.txt

I usually run this in a program like textpad so it will bring up the file changes automatically.

NOTE: To stop the output you can go to publish preferences and select omit trace actions (This will stop people reading your trace information)

It is also possible to out the data using External Interface calls to Javascript, I will write more on this soon.

function calculateTimeElapsed(startTime:Date,endTime:Date) {
    
    var sHours = startTime.getHours();
    var sMinutes = startTime.getMinutes();
     var sSeconds = startTime.getSeconds();
    var sMilliSeconds = startTime.getMilliseconds();

    var eHours = endTime.getHours();
    var eMinutes = endTime.getMinutes();
     var eSeconds = endTime.getSeconds();
    var eMilliSeconds = endTime.getMilliseconds();
    
    var sTimeSpan = (sHours*3600*1000) + (sMinutes*60*1000) + (sSeconds*1000) + (sMilliSeconds);
    var eTimeSpan = (eHours*3600*1000) + (eMinutes*60*1000) + (eSeconds*1000) + (eMilliSeconds);
    return eTimeSpan - sTimeSpan;
    
}

var myText:TextField;

for (var i:Number = 1; i<6; i++) {
        this["clip"+i] = new MovieClip();
        this["clip"+i].graphics.beginFill(0xFFFF00);
        this["clip"+i].graphics.drawCircle(40, 40, 40);
        this["clip"+i].x=i*80;
        myText=new TextField;
        myText.width=250;
        myText.height=250;
        myText.text="clip" +i;
        myText.x=10;
        myText.y=20;
        this["clip"+i].addChild(myText);
        addChild(this["clip"+i]);
}

There are multiple ways of doing this ie using JavaScript, but this is the server side solution.

You can adapt this method for several other solutions:

        foreach (Control c in this.Page.Controls)
        {                        
            if(c.GetType().FullName.Equals("System.Web.UI.HtmlControls.HtmlForm")) {
                foreach (Control cForm in c.Controls)
                {                        
                    if(cForm.GetType().Equals(typeof(TextBox))) {   
                        ((TextBox)(cForm)).Text = "";
                    }
                }
            }
        }

If you want to update the data in a table by getting information from another table.  You can acheive this by using an update inner join query.

For example if i wanted to update the phone numbers in my table using a list of contacts from a secondary table, the UPDATE INNER JOIN Query would be like the one below:

UPDATE c
SET c.PhoneNumber = c2.PhoneNumber
FROM Contact AS c
INNER JOIN ContactTable2 c2 on c.Id = c2.Id
WHERE DateCreated > GETDATE()-60