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[Swftools-common] Re: Development assistance for monitoring of swfs


From: Kurzad
Subject: [Swftools-common] Re: Development assistance for monitoring of swfs
Date: Wed, 20 Jun 2007 14:14:56 -0500

Well, most of what I've been able to extract has led me to think that
I can't alert based on the absence of any particular text strings,
because there's almost none to be had.  There are tags in the
actionscript, however, that embed other swfs and web content inside
the primary swf that first loads, and confirming that that dynamic
content exists and can be loaded would have benefit.  As long as the
developers follow a common embed tag scheme that I can watch for, I
can make it do this dynamically, almost like webcrawling swf content.
Confirmation of image content is more difficult.  Because all the
images end up being converted to arbitrary IDs, I'd have to have very
specific information ahead of time regarding the size of image files
and either what ID they were assigned or some other aggregate metric
that can be provided in advance.  I could at least alert off changes
in swf filesize, number of objects, or changes in the required flash
version so we're notified of content changes without having to rely on
the developers to tell us.

As a (somewhat convoluted) example, let's say that swfA is the primary
swf that gets loaded by default.aspx.  A simple wget for default.aspx
and search for swfs in the source code returns a list of flash content
that the page relies on, with swfA being one (or the only) flash
app/container that gets returned.  I grab the swf, export its
contents, and look for the embedMainWindow tag in the actionscript.
Using regex-like methods, I grab the path and filename of swfB that
will be embeded, then go get that file and parse it.  Doing this
confirms that both swf files still exists on the server, can be
downloaded, are accessible to users, and SHOULD indicate that the
flash content can and is being provided to customers as intended.  In
some scenarios, they appear to be using a simple container that embeds
content from other web farms.  It's possible that the container might
load, but not display the embedded content as intended because of
problems with the other farm, improper load-balancing, network/routing
issues, etc.  As much as swf content can be monitored, these problems
are the kind that I'm trying to capture.

Sadly, because the developers don't work with us directly very often,
and the content is fairly dynamic, having them provide me with the
static targets for their dependencies to monitor independantly would
be nightmarish.  I'd rather have a robust solution that doesn't
require painful amounts of maintenance.  If I can at least get them to
agree to stick to a common naming convention for certain tags, that
is.

I'll have to look into the python wrapper you mentioned, then.  I'm
primarily using Lua with a sprinkling of C at the moment, but I know
Lua is very good at embedding/extending with other languages including
Python.  If it proves too hard for me, I'll just resort to the more
IO-intensive route and rely on the swftools executables.  ;D

On Mon, Jun 18, 2007 at 12:14:18PM -0500, Kurzad wrote:
Would it be possible to steer me in the right direction regarding
which .h and .c files would benefit me most for this effort?

Since what you need seems to be simple verification of SWF contents,
you might be better off with the Python wrapper. The interface is
much more consistant.
Search the list for examples on how to use the Python version of
librfxswf.

What kind of content do you need to verify, btw.?

Greetings

Matthias




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