I created a simple Xtra dctl(Director ConTroL) which allows us to control the Adobe Director via the network socket. The idea is very simple: the Xtra listens on some port using Multiuser facility and allows to run a set of predefined tasks(which can be very easily extended, since these tasks are written in Lingo) or eval an arbitrary Lingo string.

The client which can access dctl is written in PHP and can be used from the shell, e.g:

c:\dctl STOP
c:\dctl PLAY
c:\dctl EVAL "put #hello"

As I said, tasks are written in Lingo, e.g:

on task_STOP me, args
 dispatchCommand(8706)
end
------------------------------------------
on task_PLAY me, args
 dispatchCommand(8705)
end
------------------------------------------
on task_SAVE me, args
 dispatchCommand(4101)
end
------------------------------------------
on task_EVAL me, args
 if args.count < 1 then return err("not enough arguments")
 repeat with i=1 to args.count
  str = args[i]
  do str
 end repeat
end

The first version 0.1 is available at
http://code.google.com/p/director-dctl/downloads/list (don’t forget to have a look at INSTALL file)

dctl is completely free and the source is available at http://code.google.com/p/director-dctl.

P.S. dctl is a part of our Director pipeline which also includes “dcc” - a command line tool for processing JavaScript and Lingo sources, which we really hope to make public someday as well

This entry was posted on Monday, September 14th, 2009 at 2:01 pm and is filed under automation, xtra, director. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.