Flex Presentation

8/8/2019 Flex Presentation

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Creating Software that Saves Lives

Introduction to Adobe Flex 3.0Brian Mitchell

February 18, 2008

PS Reston


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Monday, January 21, 20082

What is Flex?

Group of technologies that produce SWF (Shockwave file)binaries, a.k.a Flash movies

Tag based XML programming language: MXML

ActionScript 3.0 scripting language

Flex Builder IDE mxmlc compiler & debugger

Develop Rich Internet Applications, instead of traditionalpage based web applications

Direct manipulation (drag & drop) behavior

Client side state management


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Why Flex?

Flex 3 Beta 3 is open source under MozillaPublic License

Free SDK with command line compiler and

debugger Support for AIR (formerly the Apollo project)

UI Components are amazing!

Excellent standard components

Open source libraries like flexlib are great

Large community of Flex developers

Excellent documentation from Adobe


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ActionScript 3.0

ECMA-4 compliant

Object oriented

Packages

Classes Inheritance

Interfaces

Strong andweak typing Online API

http://livedocs.adobe.com/flex/201/langref/index.html


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ActionScript 3.0 II


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Compilation

mxmlc compiler

1. Stage one

1. Parse MXML into ActionScript classes

2. Compile ActionScript into bytecode3. Insert bytecode into a binary SWF file

2. Stage two (just-in-time compilation)

1. Flash Players contain an ActionScript Virtual

Machine (AVM). At runtime, the AVM turnsthe bytecode into machine language codethat the particular OS can interpret.


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Compilation II

Compilation can be done from:

Command line

Ant script

Flex Builder IDE Web compiler (part of LiveCycle Data ServicesES)

Like JSP compilation model, pages arecompiled when first requested, then cached

mxmlc --show-actionscript-warnings=true

c:/myDir/firstProgram.mxml


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Build tools

Free SDK includes:

mxmlc command line compiler

Debugger

Component class library

Documentation

Flex Builder 3.0 (Beta) includes:

Eclipse based IDE

SDK

Debugger

Design view

Flex Builder 2 is $250, no pricing on latestversion yet


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Data

HTTP session is unnecessary! As Flex creates an RIA, youkeep state on the client.

Asychronous

Remote object invocation (access Java POJO)

Web service

HTTP GET/POST Callback required to give client the response data

User can continue working while request is processed

HTTPService (make GET & POST requests)


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Data exchange protocols: SOAP

SOAP?

You can use it, but passing XML is not asefficient as using binary exchange. Adobeclaims it is 10 times slower.

http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/blazeds/


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Data exchange protocols: AMF

Action Media Format (AMF) data protocol

Binary data exchange over HTTP

Default protocol behind ,which is used to access data using remoteobject invocation

Now open source!

Goal is to provide AMF for all platforms


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Remote Object Invocation

Add Java classes to Flex app classpath

WEB-INF/classes

WEB-INF/lib

Integrates with J2EE security Class by class exposure to Flex via

deployment descriptors

Asynchronous method call

Callback handler

Fault-handling


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Remote Object Invocation II

Example

com.me.myServiceapplication


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Blaze DS

What provides access to Java objects? Blaze DS

Taken from LiveCycle Data Services ES, the finalrelease will be open source under the LGPL v3

license Release Candidate became available 2.1.08

Offers remoting and messaging capabilities

LiveCycle Data Services ES

Rather expensive Provides remoting and messaging capabilities, data

synchronization between client and server,publish/subscribe messaging, and PDF creation


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Flex vs. Flash

Flash is a great tool for developing videos,animations, or any small application that iswell suited to be developed on a timeline, orby layering visual elements

Flash requires the $700 IDE

Flex is a web application developersapproach to creating web applications

Flex development can be free


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Flash IDE


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Cairngorm MVC framework

Open source implementation of MVC designpatterns from J2EE and .NET

Singleton

Service to Worker

ModelLocator

Front Controller

etcetera

Written in ActionScript 3.0

Not yet for Flex 3

http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Cairngorm


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Thirty-minute Flex test-drive for Java developers

http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flex/articles/java_testdrive.html

A couple tips for the installation

Set JAVA_HOME environment variable to, for example:C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.5.0_11

Do not include the \bin directory on the path!

Your root directory may be C:\Documents and Settings, but forsimplicity, place the fds-tomcat directory in your C:\ drive.

A class not found exception is thrown for the word andbecause the pathname is not quoted.


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Adobe AIR

http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/air/

Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR) is a cross-operating system runtime being developed by

Adobe that allows developers to leveragetheir existing web development skills (Flash,Flex, HTML, JavaScript, Ajax) to build anddeploy rich Internet applications (RIAs) to the

desktop.


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Capital Area Flex User Group

http://www.dc-flex.org/

Meetings usually held at AboutWeb inRockville, MD

Next meeting Wednesday, March 05 2008 6:00pm - 9:00pm

6177 Executive Blvd, Rockville MD 20852


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Resources

Flex Developer Center http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flex/

Adobe Flex 3 Language Reference

http://livedocs.adobe.com/labs/flex3/langref/ Flex Component Explorer

http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flex/samples/code_explorer/

FlexLib http://code.google.com/p/flexlib/

www.flex.org


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