Flash communicating with Servlets

I am new to Flash but have been given a task to get a Flash file to request information from a servlet. Is this possible, and if so, are there any web pages that may be able to help me out/ guide me through this process?

Thanks in advance.

I don't know of any sites that will tell you how to do it with java but there is a page on Macromedia that tells you how to pass variables using cold fusion and the method is pretty much the same in java.

If you're talking about url variables, you can do it as follows:

You create a page which <EMBEDS> the flash file and then in the url where you would usually have
<embed src="flashfile.swf">
instead you have
<embed src="flashfile.swf?varname=value">
where varname is the variable name and value is the value you want to assign to it (obviously )

these values then appear on the root timeline of flash and I think you get them using _root.varname to retrieve the value.

if you've got sometime, you can learn how to handle xml within the flash movie...then all ya need to do is have the servlet output an xml stream to the movie...it's the snootier way of doing it, but maybe a little overkill...rob