Peter's Blog

Much as I hate flash, it is a nice way to embed a sound or video player in a page. Here's how I did it in rails using the JW FLV Media Player. I added the following to my view:

   1  <script type="text/javascript" src="/javascripts/swfobject.js"></script>
   2  
   3  <% for oRssItem in @rssitems %>
   4    <hr/>
   5    <h3><%= oRssItem.title %></h3>
   6    <p><%= oRssItem.description %></p>
   7    <table width="470">
   8      <tr>
   9         <td wIdth="50%"><%= oRssItem.created.strftime( "%m %B %y") %></td>
  10         <td align="right"><%= link_to "Download", "/#{ oRssItem.filename}" %></td>
  11      </tr>
  12    </table>
  13  
  14    <div id="player<%=oRssItem.id%>">This text will be replaced</div>
  15  
  16    <script type="text/javascript">
  17      var so = new SWFObject('/mediaplayer.swf','mpl','470','20','8');
  18      so.addParam('allowscriptaccess','always');
  19      so.addParam('allowfullscreen','true');
  20      so.addVariable('width','470');
  21      so.addVariable('height','20');
  22      so.addVariable('file','/<%= oRssItem.filename%>');
  23      so.write('player<%=oRssItem.id%>');
  24    </script>
  25  <% end %>

This generates a page full of podcast entries, each with a little media player thing so you can listen to them easily. This does mp3 files but it can handle video too.

I am aware that the swfobject.js would be better loaded in the html header.

Here's a demo: I don't know if this will work in the rss feed (UPDATE: no!) so bear with me and please be gentle on my bandwidth, it's quite a catchy tune:

The main reason I am blogging this is because it only needs a change to a view file and installation of two files in the /public directory (the player and a javascript file). Since view files are awkward to comment legibly I decided to document it all here so I can find it again.