Anna-Maria Metzak http://twitter.com/anna_metzak,
Elena-Oana Tabaranu http://twitter.com/oanat
FII, UAIC 2009

Adobe Flex Framework

What is Adobe Flex?

Free open source framework

Released by Adobe Systems

Created for the development and deployment of cross-platform RIA

Based on the Adobe Flash platform.

Flex is more than Flash

Language:MXML tags (Macromedia XML)

object oriented language ActionScript

Applications:Web applications (Flash Player)

Desktop applications (AIR)

Flex Components

User Interface Components buttons, list boxes, trees, data grids, text controls, layout containers

charts

graphs

Web Services

Drag and Drop

Modal Dialogs

Animation Effects

Application States

Form Validation

...

Flex vs Ajax

FlexIs stateless

Not indicated for text-heavy pages - Flash Player is less efficient at handling large amounts of text than the browser

AjaxNot the right choice for an application with complex interactivity requirements (no IDE)

Development and debugging can often be complicated

Flex and AjaxOften the right choice

Flex-Ajax Bridge - facilitates communication between JavaScript and a Flex SWF

RIA Server Architecture Basics

Communication Between Flex And The Application Server

HTTPServiceHTTP(S) requests (mostly GET or POST)

transport various content types, from simple URLEncoded variables to more complex data like XML

used to communicate with a simple script or page like a JSP page, an ASP page or a PHP script.

WebService SOAP messages over HTTP

ActionScript complex types are automatically mapped from and to SOAP/XMLschema data.

RemoteObjectActionScript Message Format (AMF) data (not a transfer protocol, it is binary ActionScript)

dramatically faster than any other mean of communication (send and receive strongly typed objects)

the ActionScript serialization/deserialization process takes place on the server side

Flex application architecture as MVC

MVC - View layer

MVC - Model layer

Stores data

Often implemented as Singleton

Uses Value Objects

MVC Controller layer

Logic between the View and the Model

Update the Model

Listen to the View

MVC the Business layer

Communicate with the Application Server to let it update the web application's Model, i.e. the DataBase

Architecture Frameworks

Cairngorm

PureMVC

Mate

Swiz

...

Limitations

Flex content is not indexed by search engines

Text fields don't remember previous entries

Password manager doesn't work

Browser shortcuts like Ctrl+T don't work

Reasons to use Flex

No More Browser Compliance Testing.

ECMAScript for XML (E4X)

No More Interface Layout Pain.

Simple Field Validation.

Rich Media Support.

True Separation of Presentation and Content.

The Flex Development Environment.

CSS

Adobe AIR (Apollo)