II. Setting up the Environment

a) Setting up the Database

You will need a mySQL database. Create a table using the following query:

CREATE TABLE `guestbook` (
  `ID` int(5) NOT NULL auto_increment,
  `name` text NOT NULL,
  `email` text NOT NULL,
  `comments` text NOT NULL,
  `time` datetime NOT NULL default '0000-00-00 00:00:00',
  PRIMARY KEY  (`ID`),
) TYPE=MyISAM COMMENT='GuestBook entries will be stored here' ;

The above SQL code creates a table with 5 columns, namely; ID, name, email, comments and time with ID as a primary key.

b) Setting up the Movie

This GuestBook is basically a one frame movie containing two movie clips. The first movie clip is called read which contains a TextArea Component with some textboxes to display GuestBook Statistics with a couple of control buttons. The other movie clip is called write which contains TextInput Components for one-line fields and TextArea for multi-line fields with a couple of control buttons. The reason I have used TextArea Component is because Flash MX 2004 does not have a Scroll Bar Component but has this as a replacement of the textbox that comes with an automatic scrollbar with itself. The following is the GuestBook layout to give you a clear picture of what I am drawing here.

The above layout is self-explanatory, so I am moving forward towards the Action Scripting done in the movie.