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CFDJ article: Your First Flex Application with a ColdFusion Backend
Our Flex "My To-Do List" tutorial has been published in the June issue of the ColdFusion Developer's Journal (and we made the front page!). It can be read online and the source can be found at the project page.
Although simple, we tried to be as complete as possible for "your first Flex app". It shows how to use the CF wizards, use events, create custom components and use the RemoteObject tag to send and retrieve data from the server.
IFBIN: free andsource Flex examples
We were involved in
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IFBIN project as Flex by Example authors where we free aol instant messenger packet sniffer one example for an early Flex AOL Instant Messenger crashes on startup that demonstrated the use of Aol Instant Messenger Symbols Object and ColdFusion. We are happy to see IFBIN now evolve into ansource and free collection of great Flex and Flash examples. If you are learning Flex or Flash, we highly recommend you to download it. Although there are no tutorials that accompany the examples, the sources are heavily commented. Enjoy!
Inserting Yahoo! maps in a Flex 2 application
One of the most challenging parts of creating Home Locator was the integration with Yahoo! Maps since there was no Flex 2 version of their API (they have a Flex 1.5 version, which does not work in Flex 2).
A lot of people asked me at CFUnited and by email about how I did it. In response to that, I made this simple example that shows the details, although not all of the functions are implemented.
It is important to say before we start that I don't recommend using this technique unless you need it right away. It would be better to wait until Yahoo! releases the Flex 2 version of their API. If you can wait, it will be so much easier for you and you won't have to deal with the whole Local Connection stuff (I will explain this in a minute).
As I mentioned before, Yahoo! doesn't have a Flex 2.0 map API, so if we want to have a map, we need to use the Flash API. But having the map in Flash and the rest of the app in Flex it is not as simple as having everything written in Flex. This is because now the player has 2 virtual machines, one for Flex that runs ActionScript 3 and another for Flash that runs ActionScript 2. The problem is that the communication between both VM is not straightforward. It is not very clean and it's not as robust as I would like it to be. But we need to communicate in some way and that way is by using Local Connection. Peter Ent from Adobe made a great post explaining the details of how to communicate Flash and Flex via Local Connection so I highly recommend you to read it.
These are the steps to put the map in a Flex app:
You need to download and install the Yahoo! Map Flash component Get a Yahoo! ID. Create a .fla movie and drag the Map component from the component panel to the stage. Put an instance name to your map. In my case a used "myMap". Write the Yahoo! ID on the parameters of the component. Write your ActionScript code and compile it. You can experiment a bit with the code, mine is very basic as you can see below (I did it on the fist frame of the movie): // ActionScript file
import com.yahoo.maps.markers.CustomPOIMarker;
import com.yahoo.maps.tools.PanTool;
import com.yahoo.maps.widgets.NavigatorWidget;
// register as a listener to get notified when the map finishes the initialization state
myMap.addEventListener(com.yahoo.maps.api.flash.YahooMap.EVENT_INITIALIZE, onInitMap);
function onInitMap(eventData)
{
// create tools and widgets to control the map
myMap.addTool(new PanTool(), true);
myMap.addWidget(new NavigatorWidget("closed"));
// notify Flex that the map finished the initialization state
connectedMap.send("_flexClient","mapInitialized");
}
var connectedMap:LocalConnection = new LocalConnection();
connectedMap.addMarker = function (connectionData:Object):Void
{
//Add the marker to the map
myMap.addMarkerByAddress(CustomPOIMarker,connectionData.address, connectionData.marker);
myMap.setCenterByAddress(connectionData.address, 2500);
}
connectedMap.connect("_flashClient");
What I did in the Flash movie is to set a listener for the "initialize" event. This event gets fired when the map finishes its initialization. Inside this event, I added a Aol instant messenger profile rumor no information provided and a "widget" to be able to control, drag and zoom the map. I also call the Flex application to let it know that flash finished its initialization, and it's ready for use. This also helps me forcing the connection from Flash, because I found (in the beta, that is. I don't know if the bug is fixed now) that if you don't start the connection from Flash the connection sometimes doesn't work.
I also want to mention that I used an underscore in the beginning of the connection name because I found (also in the beta, but I think that is fixed now) that the connection does not work if you name it without it. For example I used "_flexClient" and "_flashClient" for my names.
I included the .fla in the source code. So you only need tothe file, include your ID following the steps described at Yahoo!, compile the swf , and you are ready to go.
Now let's look at the Flex side. There are two files. One is the mxml application (MapExample.mxml) where all the components are.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<mx:Application xmlns:mx="http://www.adobe.com/2006/mxml" layout="absolute" xmlns:local="*" viewSourceURL="/assets/content/exampleFiles/flex/map/srcview/index.html">
<local:MapConnection id="mapConnection"/>
<mx:Panel x="10" y="10" width="392" height="336" layout="absolute">
<mx:SWFLoader id="map" width="370" height="260" source="assets/mapExample.swf" autoLoad="true" x="1" y="1"/>
<mx:TextInput id="address" x="63" y="268" width="229" enter="mapConnection.addMarker(address.text)"/>
<mx:Button x="301" y="268" label="Search" click="mapConnection.addMarker(address.text)"/>
<mx:Label x="10" y="271" text="Address:"/>
</mx:Panel>
</mx:Application>
In this file, we have the SWFLoader tag that will be loading the map into our flex app. In this file we also have a tag that it is the instance of our local connection. MapConnection it is actually an ActionScript class that it is defined in its own file and extends from LocalConnection.
package
{
import flash.net.LocalConnection;
public class MapConnection extends LocalConnection
{
private var isInitialized:Boolean;
private var index:uint;
public function MapConnection(server:String = "_flexClient")
{
try {
connect(server);
}
catch (error:ArgumentError)
{
// server already created/connected
}
super();
}
public function mapInitialized():void
{
isInitialized = true;
trace("SearchConnection init")
}
public function addMarker(address:String):void
{
var marker:Object = {index:++index, title:"title", description:"description", markerColor:0x990099, strokeColor:0xFFFF00 Aol Instant Messenger Sign in /> if(isInitialized) send("_flashClient","addMarker", {address:address, marker:marker});
}
}
}
In this other file we have one constructor and two methods. One method is "mapInitialized()" that will be called by Flash when Flash finishes the initialization of the map. The other is "addMarker()" that is called by the button that sends the info on the text field uninstall icq lite the "address" parameter. What the method does is take that info, create a marker object, and send that to the Flash client (the map) using the local connection method "send()" that we gay male messager bags from LocalConnection.
As you can see, this example is very straightforward. You enter an address or just a zip code (easy to type) and click search to see the address marked in the map.
View Example
Adobe Flex Developer Derby winners
The winners of the Flex Developer Derby contest have been announced last week. We are happy to say that our Home Locator was selected as the winner of the Product configurators/self-service guided applications category. There were many good entries, which are no longer shown at Adobe Labs. I think they will post them all at Adobe again when they get updated to Flex's final release. You can view the winning entries of the six categories in this article: Announcing the Flex Developer Derby Winners.
Update: Actually, the entries are still there, just not linked from the main page: Flex developer entries
CFUnited presentation slides and source code
Thanks i want to sign in on msn messenger everyone that attended our session. We hope you enjoyed our fighting on stage :) and you found the topic interesting. We think that Flex is an amazing product that speeds up the RIA development a lot.
As free download msn Messager 7.1 english promised, you can view the slides at CFUnited 2006 presentation. We also have the source code of our To-do list application for download (you can download or view the source). We forgot to lina bulgaria icq that the To-do list will be also published on CFDJ as a step-by-step tutorial. We will post the link to that when they publish it.
Flex 2 CFUnited presentation
We've finally arrived to DC!
Today, we will be presenting Flex 2 and ColdFusion integration. It is an introductory session, so if you are wondering what Flex 2 is and how to integrate with ColdFusion, we hope to see you there.
Flex 2.0 and ColdFusion Integration In this session, ColdFusion developers will learn how it's not CF or Flex, but rather how Flex and ColdFusion integrate to create RIAs. In "traditional" applications, CF connects to external systems, processes business logic, and builds an Display Picture for MSN Messenger presentation layer. In an RIA, CF still connects to external systems and processes business logic while Flex is used
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construct a richer presentation layer delivered by the Flash Player. In this session, you'll see how the two technologies integrate and get a first taste of Flex development. You'll learn next steps for orienting yourself to Flex and common gotchas encountered by CF developers new to Flex. While previous experience with Flex is not necessary, knowledge of ColdFusion components will be helpful for this session.
Our Flex Developer Derby entries
We submitted two entries for the Flex Developer Derby, which, for some reason, are not yet posted at Adobe Labs.
Home Locator is a complete revamp of our Real Estate sample application. We changed the functionality and included a Yahoo! Map that shows the property location. We actually didn't use much of the old code and we focused much more on the usability and look and feel of the application. We spent an incredible amount of time during the design,
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even doing actual code. Most of the hurdles we encountered were due to Yahoo! maps not wanting to behave and bugs in the Flex framework, specially when we wanted to skin the application, going away from the default halo (or whatever is called now) Aol Instant Messenger Member Sign on At the end, we are happy smileys for aol Instent messinging the outcome. Before you ask, no, we are not planning to give the source away, at least not for now. We are, however, going to post the source for the original Real aol instant messenger v. 5.8 application for the Beta 3 release.
We have no hopes of winning anything with the other application, My to-do list, since it does not compare to the other entries. It is really a very simple view aol instant messenger conversation logs and it was developed as part of an article for the ColdFusion Developer Journal. So you can expect to see a step-by-step tutorial based on it and the complete source for download soon.
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