This article helps explain how to use Macromedia Flash 5 in conjunction with PHP and a MySQL database. This demonstration will show you how to setup a simple login and registration form, then allow users to save movie clip positions and various properties in the database. When they log back in the movie clips are in the same position.

For this tutorial you will have to have some basic knowledge of PHP and MySQL, hopefully you won't need much though. It is also assumed that you have a decent understanding of Flash 5 Actionscript. This tutorial shows you how to set up a table in a MySQL database, then using PHP manipulate that table and interact with Flash. The first part of the tutorial demonstrates how to create a unique user ID in the database; in this case it will be the person's name. The unique user ID is required because in the next part we'll be saving the x and y coordinates of movie clips for each user. In this way a user can return to the (your) site at anytime and the movie clips will be in the exact same position that they left them in. I also added in a place for the user to add in a comment, which is also saved.

For a working example of this tutorial please goto http://www.flash-db.com/Ex1/Ex1_SaveMovie.html. All of the PHP code was kept as simple as possible. Also this is meant as an introductory or example of using Flash and PHP together. There are a lot more useful things you can do -- this was just a simple example I choose to describe. It's helpful to follow the scripts and Fla source included, in addition to viewing the working example at the same time.