How to show progress messages in Flex from C# initiated Batch process

Question

I have Flex call a C# dll which starts a long batch process (10 minutes). This process is actually a PERL program which periodically outputs progress messages. I want to be able to stream these messages back to a text area in Flex. Can someone point me to an example of such an arrangement?

Mark.

Answer 1

What it sounds like you're looking for is a messaging bus that can push messages back to the Flex client, rather than having the Flex client poll for status.

Just in case you are open to polling, you could do that very easily by standing up a ASPX page that returns XML data about the progress of the batch process. Since you're already kicking off the batch process from Flex I'm assuming you're familiar with that approach.

If you want a true messaging solution, you can use the open source Fluorine FX product and its implementation of RTMP:

http://www.fluorinefx.com/

If you download the installer it comes with a sample application called DateFeed which includes the client and server code for setting up a simple RTMP endpoint and subscribing to it from Flex.