Flash CS3: What Happened to the WebServiceConnector Component? ![[Registration never required for free content]](/images/free.gif)
By: David Stiller on Thursday, September 11, 2008
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Based on the title of this article, you might get the impression that the WebServiceConnection component has disappeared in Flash CS3 — that you can't consume Web services at all after Flash 8 — and that isn't actually true. If you're programming in ActionScript 2.0, you can go right on using any of the data components listed in the Components panel, including the one for web services. The issue described in this article hinges on the way Flash CS3 responds to the version of ActionScript you're using. As soon as you configure a FLA file's publish settings for ActionScript 3.0, the Components panel actually changes the items it displays, causing the data components to vanish. So it's ultimately ActionScript 3.0 that makes a challenge out of using Web services in conjunction with Flash.
The overall number of components in Flash has been reduced for ActionScript 3.0 FLA files. The data components, as mentioned, have been removed completely and now belong to the Flex framework. A handful of user interface (UI) components, such as Accordion, Tree, and Window, are also absent. Again, these components are still available for ActionScript 2.0 documents, but if you want to program in ActionScript 3.0 — which is only possible as of Flash CS3 — you'll need a workaround.
This article, adapted from an excerpt of The ActionScript 3.0 Quick Reference Guide, gives you exactly that, thanks to a free third-party component. This reference book is slated for October, 2008, published by O'Reilly, and written by Community MX partner David Stiller, as well as Rich Shupe, Jen deHaan, and Darren Richardson.
