Quick Tip: Create a Basic Google Search App in Flash – Blancer.com Tutorials and projects

In this Quick Tip, I will show you how to create a basic search application featuring the Google search engine.

Final Result Preview

Let’s take a look at the final result we will be working towards:

Step 1: Brief Overview

Using a TextField and some Events, we’ll send the search terms to Google and display the result in the browser.

Step 2: Set Up Your Flash File

Launch Flash and create a new Flash Document, set the stage size to 320x100px and the background color to #181818.

Step 3: Interface

This is the interface we’ll be using, it includes an Input TextField and a button. Set the TextField instance name to searchTerms and the button to searchButton.

Step 4: ActionScript

This is the class that carries out all the work, please read the comments in the code to fully understand its behavior.

package
{
	import flash.display.Sprite;
	import flash.events.MouseEvent;
	import flash.events.KeyboardEvent;
	import flash.ui.Keyboard;
	import flash.net.navigateToURL;
	import flash.net.URLRequest;

	public class Main extends Sprite
	{
		public function Main():void
		{
			searchButton.addEventListener(MouseEvent.MOUSE_UP, google);//Listens to a button release and executes the search function
			addEventListener(KeyboardEvent.KEY_DOWN, google);//Listens for the Enter key and executes the search function
			searchTerms.addEventListener(MouseEvent.MOUSE_DOWN, selectText); //Selects the current text of the textfield for an easy input
		}

		//Notice the * (special type), this allow the function to be run by different types of events, avoiding the creation of separate functions with the same code

		private function google(e:*):void
		{
			if(e.type == "mouseUp")//If called by a MouseUp event
			{
				navigateToURL(new URLRequest("http://www.google.com/search?q=" + searchTerms.text)); //Search google
			}
			else if(e.keyCode == Keyboard.ENTER)//Called by Enter key
			{
				navigateToURL(new URLRequest("http://www.google.com/search?q=" + searchTerms.text));
			}
		}

		private function selectText(e:MouseEvent):void
		{
			searchTerms.setSelection(0, searchTerms.length); //Selects the current text in the Textfield
		}
	}
}

As you can tell by reading the code, the key is the Google URL that lets us add the search terms to the query, this is http://www.google.com/search?q=[search terms here].

You can also try this example with different search engines such as Yahoo! for example: http://search.yahoo.com/search;_ylt=?p=[search terms here] or ActiveTuts: http://active.tutsplus.com/?s=[search terms here].