AutoMovieClip Sample

Turbine includes a set of commands designed to simplify common development tasks - for example displaying a list of links can be done with the <AutoMovieClip> MML command. Let's see an example of this in action, starting by simple movie clip with a button:

Although we could easily create the movieclip and button visually on a Flash editor, we'll create it in MML, by using a <Movieclip>, <Button> and <TextField> tags:

<Script event="Release"> 
      getUrl(button_url, "_blank");
    </Script>

</Button>

<TextField variable="button_label"
             pos="0,12" size="220,30"
             fontSize="20"
             align="center"
             flags="noSelect,readOnly">default label</TextField>

</Movieclip>

The first movie above was displayed by simply loading the above MML file.

Let's now create the DataSet that will be used to display a number of instances of this button - it will be loacted in the buttons_dataset.txt:

<button_label,	button_url>
"Dingo Industries",	"http://www.example.com/?dingo"
"Lagoon Supermarket",	"http://www.example.com/?lagoon"
"Martinica Bar",	"http://www.example.com/?martinica"
"Dragon Lounge",	"http://www.example.com/?dragon"
"Blue Pasteur, inc",	"http://www.example.com/?pasteur"
"Sri Lanka Bar",	"http://www.example.com/?sri"
"Sunday Road inc.",	"http://www.example.com/?sunday"
"Bay Records",	"http://www.example.com/?bay"
"Friday Bank",	"http://www.example.com/?friday"
"Global Cloud Ltd.",	"http://www.example.com/?cloud"
"Beethoven Sings, inc",	"http://www.example.com/?beethoven"
"Fill Max inc.",	"http://www.example.com/?fill"

The above DataSet will be used by this <AutoMovieClip> MML command:

We have two choices where to issue this command - either in the MML where the button/movieclip is defined or on the .aspx script - let's issue it from our script(automovieclip1.aspx):

<%@ Page language="c#" %>
<%
// create the Turbine object:
Turbine.Turbine7 Turbine = new Turbine.Turbine7();

// load DataSet from the buttons_dataset.txt file:
Turbine.LoadDataSet("buttons_dataset.txt", "buttonsDataSet");

// include movieclip.mml:
Turbine.Include("movieclip.mml");

// create an <AutoMovieClip> tag:
Turbine.Create("<AutoMovieClip dataSet='buttonsDataSet' defaultId='button_movieclip_id' defaultDy='56'/>");

// now generate the movie to the web browser
Turbine.GenerateFlash();

And we'll obtain the following Flash movie:

We have a problem with the number of movie clips, which are too large to fit in a reasonable size (and besides the number might grow as we change the DataSet) - so add a Flash component that provides us with scrolling capabilities - we can use the ScrollPane component from the "Flash UI Components Set 2". We can add this component by drag'm'dropping an instance of the component into an empty Flash .swf, and then simply including it on our .aspx script here's our new script (automovieclip2.aspx):

<%@ Page language="c#" %>
<%
// create the Turbine object:
Turbine.Turbine7 Turbine = new Turbine.Turbine7();

// load DataSet from the buttons_dataset.txt file:
Turbine.LoadDataSet("buttons_dataset.txt", "buttonsDataSet");

// include movieclip.mml:
Turbine.Include("movieclip.mml");

// create an <AutoMovieClip> tag:
Turbine.Create("<AutoMovieClip id='automovieclip_buttons' dataSet='buttonsDataSet' defaultId='button_movieclip_id' defaultDy='56' flags='define'/>");

// include the ScrollPane component:
Turbine.Include("scrollpane.swf");

// place a ScrollPane component referring to the automovieclip_buttons id we created above:
Turbine.Create("<Place component='ScrollPane' size='240,222'><Param name='Scroll Content' value='automovieclip_buttons'/></Place>");

// now generate the movie to the web browser
Turbine.GenerateFlash();

With the above script we'll obtain a scrollable panel with our AutoMovieClip generated movie clips:

A list is nice - but let's now create a grid of movie clips. We can do this easily with the <AutoMovieClip> tag by adding the cols and few more attributes - arriving at the following <AutoMovieClip> tag (created form the .aspx script):

And we'll obtain the following movie (automovieclip3.aspx):

Hummm, we again have a problem with sizes... Well, let's add the ScrollPane component and it will be easily solved (automovieclip4.aspx):

Besides the <AutoMovieClip> command, Turbine includes the <AutoImage> command, that can create lists/grids of images, and the very powerful <AutoMedia>, that can automate the display of any element type - text, buttons, images - in fact, anything element possible in MML.