Central Scoreboard with Flash and ASP

First thing to do is create a blank database; I called mine database.mdb to keep things simple. In the database you need to create a table to hold the scores, surprising enough I called mine: scores.

The structure should be:

Player (text field, default length)
Score (number field)

Let’s also add some default players so that there are already results on the scoreboard when visitors start playing. I have done it 3 letter arcade style throughout the article:

• CJK – 10000
• SAM – 20000
• XER – 30000

Once you have entered the values you can close the database, we won’t need to open it again.

The scoreboard file
Now open up your text editor and create a file called scoreboard.asp. This will extract the top 3 results from the database along with their scores so that the flash file can read the top scoring players and compile them into a scoreboard.

Define a connection to the database and open up a recordset:

<%
conn = "Driver={Microsoft Access Driver (*.mdb)}; DBQ=” + Server.MapPath(“database.mdb”)
set rs=Server.CreateObject("ADODB.recordset")
rs.Source = "SELECT * FROM scores ORDER BY score DESC"
rs.ActiveConnection = conn
rs.Open()

Now we need to write out the variables of the top 3 players:

Number=1
Do until number = 4
   response.write("player" & number & "=" & (rs.Fields.Item("player").value)) & vbCrLf
   response.write("score" & number & "=" & (rs.Fields.Item("score").value)) & vbCrLf
number = number + 1
rs.MoveNext
loop

Then finally close the recordset

rs.Close()
Set rs = Nothing

You can then upload these files and open them in your browser (or skip past the uploading if you’re working on your local machine). It should produce:

player1=XER score1=30000 player2=SAM score2=20000 player3=CJK score3=10000

Adding player’s scores
Next we need a file that will add player’s scores when they are sent. We also need a system to stop users adding scores to the database without actually playing the game. Bring up a new file in your text editor and save it as addscore.asp. This file will be sent variables from the flash movie:

Player – this will be the player’s name
Score – the player’s score
Passcode – this is a variable that makes sure the user is not just accessing the page using their browse

In this file we open up the connection as normal but change the SQL:

<%
If Request.Form("passcode") = "XHjf5" Then

Dim playername
playername = "XXX"
If Request.Form("player") <> "" Then
 playername = Request.Form("player")
End If
playername = (Left(playername, 3))

Dim conn
conn = "Driver={Microsoft Access Driver (*.mdb)}; DBQ=" + Server.MapPath("database.mdb")

set rs=Server.CreateObject("ADODB.recordset")
rs.Source = "INSERT INTO scores (player, score) VALUES ('" + Request.Form("player") + "', " + Request.Form("score") + ")"
rs.ActiveConnection = conn
rs.Open()

rs.Close()
Set rs = Nothing

End If

Response.Write(“Score Recorded. Close Window”)
%>


conn = "Driver={Microsoft Access Driver (*.mdb)}; DBQ=” + Server.MapPath(“database.mdb”)
set rs=Server.CreateObject("ADODB.recordset")
rs.Source = "SELECT * FROM scores ORDER BY score DESC"
rs.ActiveConnection = conn
rs.Open()



Now we need to write out the variables of the top 3 players:


Number=1
Do until number = 4
   response.write("player" & number & "=" & (rs.Fields.Item("player").value)) & vbCrLf
   response.write("score" & number & "=" & (rs.Fields.Item("score").value)) & vbCrLf
number = number + 1
rs.MoveNext
loop



Then finally close the recordset.


rs.Close()
Set rs = Nothing



You can then upload these files and open them in your browser (or skip past the uploading if you’re working on your local machine). It should produce:


player1=XER score1=30000 player2=SAM score2=20000 player3=CJK score3=10000