How do I configure this thing for my project?

- Simply copy the Connectivity.as file to your project root and you're good to go.

Extra info: If you want to package this utility to your project's setup, simply edit the first line to the appropriate package (you'll know how to do this when you want to do it.)

How do I interact with it?

- This utility will be available to your project statically by calling 'Connectivity' anywhere in your project. For a class reference, see this link.

Extra info: The connectivity class will automatically be instantiated lazily (which basically means it doesn't take up any memory until you need it). The utility operates using a lazily instantiated singleton (slightly modified to work with Actionscript 3.0).

What uses cases could this 'Connectivity' utility be used for?

- Any time your project depends on an internet connection being (constantly) available, this utility could help you out by providing constant status information on the availability of an internet connection.

- The Connectivity utility dispatches events when changes to the connection occur. For example, if for any reason connection with the internet is lost, the CONNECTION_LOST event will be dispatched, informing any interested listener with this occurance, upon which your application could take appropriate measures.

More questions?

Ask me - jorncruijsen@gmail.com

Some nifty examples to feast your eyes on

You generally start off with attaching event listeners to the connectivity checker, the checker fires off four types of events; CONNECTION_PROBE_FIRED; CONNECTION_LOST; CONNECTION_GAINED and CONNECTION_OK, all of which are constants in the Connectivity class.

Here's what they're for:

• CONNECTION_PROBE_FIRED - will be dispatched each time the connectivity checker is testing the connection.
• CONNECTION_LOST - will be dispatched when something has gone wrong while attempting to retrieve the URL end-point.
• CONNECTION_GAINED - will be dispatched when a connection has been found (but ONLY AFTER it has been lost)
• CONNECTION_OK - will be dispatched when everything is OK with the connection

You add the event listeners just like you're used to, except statically, like so:

Obviously, you also need to create the callback functions that you created listeners for, here's an example for the CONNECTION_LOST event:

After that you can do some configuring if you feel like it, you can tweak the interval between each connectivity check (which is 5 seconds by default), or you could modify the sensitivity of the latency check (by default it's 3, for immediate response you could make it 1, or for high accuracy over-time you could make it 8, or whatever you like).

When you're done configuring, you start the monitor, like so:

Note that it doesn't matter at what point in time you start the monitor, you could do it before adding the event listeners or after - the order you do it in is irrelevant. However, if you don't start the monitor, obviously it won't be monitoring and it won't be doing much of anything.

After the monitor has been started you can query it with the current status of the connection using the isConnected getter, which is a Boolean:

Or you could query the latency (for whatever reason):

If anything you need to know about happens to the connection, you'll be notified using the designated events and you can take appropriate measures to account for the change.

And that's all there is to it! It's THAT simple. Good luck using this useful utility in your project!

Details coming soon