March 26, 2000 - JukeBox Principles | WebReference

March 26, 2000 - JukeBox Principles

Yehuda Shiran March 26, 2000
JukeBox Principles
Tips: March 2000

Yehuda Shiran, Ph.D.
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A streaming media jukebox consists of an array of streaming media selections. Let's assume that this array is called streams in this tip. Each element of this array is an object with two properties: url and name. The url parameter specifies the URL of the streaming media selection. The name parameter specifies how will this selection be presented in the jukebox' drop-down list. We can now show how to write the drop-down list dynamically: 

with (document) {
  writeln('<SELECT NAME="streams" onChange="change()">');
  for (var i = 0; i < streams.length; i++) {
    writeln('<OPTION VALUE="', streams[i].url, '">', streams[i].name);
  }
  writeln("</SELECT>");
}

The event handler change() kicks in whenever there is a change in the selection:

function change() {
  var list = document.playerCtrl.streams;
  var streamURL = list.options[list.selectedIndex].value;
  document.mediaPlayer.stop();
  document.mediaPlayer.fileName = streamURL;
}

First, we extract the URL of the currently selected item. We then call the Media Player's stop() method and then restart the new selection by assigning its URL to the Media Player's fileName property.

Learn more about our streaming media jukebox in Column 51, A Streaming Media JukeBox.