How can I count the participants' number in TextChatApp? (using SharedObject, FMS)

Question

Hi all.
How can I count participants' number?
If the 3st user enter the room, the 3st user have to know that how many users are in the room.
How do I know how many users are in the room?
Thanks in advanced.
Kevin.

Answer 1

You have server side hooks for connections coming in or being closed (including here custom code for server disconnecting users for idle purposes).
you need to keep track of the connections I don't remember now what FMS offers out of the box. Let's assume not much.
When connection is coming in you can choose to accept or reject it. When you accept a connection you need to add it to your existing connections array or whatever data structure you use to keep track of them. Also you need to iterate to all connected users (clients) and call a custom method "userJoined()" on them to notify that a new user has joined.
When a user leaves you need to remove the user from the collection and also notify that it left.
on wowza you have stuff like :
private HashSet();
public void onConnect(IClient client, RequestFunction function,
            AMFDataList params) {
public void onDisconnect(IClient client) {
public void onConnectAccept(IClient client) {
    _connectedClients.add(client); 
    sendUserJoined();
@param client
    public void onConnectReject(IClient client) {
         _connectedClients.remove(client); 
        sendUserLeft();
    public void sendUserJoined(String userName)
        Iterator it = _connectedClients.iterator();
        while (it.hasNext()) { 
            IClient each =  it.next();
                each.call("userLeft", userName);
FMS has similar hooks. This is simplified but you have a rough idea. You can call clients with no parameters and then is up to client so call back for updates to the server if interested. You need to implement "userJoined" and userLeft client side also.
C