As you may have heard, I am currently writing a book (http://manning.com/allmon) on how to integrate Flex into a Java based web application. When we started this project, we had many ideas for what we were going to do for a sample application to use throughout the book. Too many titles out there either use trivial or incomplete examples that work well to showcase as much of the technology as possible but usually fall short in giving the user a clear picture of how to develop an end-to-end solution. So my co-author and I, through suggestion from a fellow developer, decided to base our sample application on the XPlanner project.
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Resurrecting XPlanner
7 08 2008Comments : 3 Comments »
Tags : book, flex, java, RIA
Categories : RIA
New Flex Maven plugin on the block
26 03 2008I’ve recently discovered a new player in the Flex/Maven plugin game called Flex Mojos. This one is slightly different than the other ones that I’ve seen in that it’s using the new Java based compiler API just released with Flex 3. One nice side effect is that it appears to be much faster than the previous plugins. I’ll be keeping my eye on this one to hopefully implement a decent integration with FlexUnit or even better FUnit.
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Tags : agile, flex, funit, Maven, RIA
Categories : RIA
What did I get myself into now…
12 03 2008Well, it’s now official, I’m writing a book. I’ve signed my contract, and there’s no turning back now. “You’re going to do what?” you may ask. My friend and cohort here at Pillar, BJ Allmon and I have begun the adventure of writing our first book, our first not only writing together but our first for each of us, tentatively titled “Flex on Java” for Manning Publications. Yes, Manning, you know those guys with all the great “In Action” books with the funny looking people on the covers. I’m really excited about this because I’ve always felt they put out good quality books, let’s hope that we don’t ruin that trend.
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Tags : agile, book, flex, java, RIA
Categories : RIA
Refactoring to RIAs - Agile 2008
30 01 2008BJ and I have decided to throw our hat into the ring and submitted a session proposal to the Agile 2008 conference. You can read about it and comment on it on the Agile 2008 submission site here (http://submissions.agile2008.org/node/1676), or I’ve copied the summary below.
In 2002 Macromedia used the term “Rich Internet Applications” (RIA) to describe the next generation of web applications that have all of the benefits of a traditional desktop application, with the flexibility of being deployed via the Internet.
However, it’s 2008 and RIA has not been able to penetrate the business application sector with any real success. The old days of RIA are history. (Maintenance nightmares, weird or no unit testing, and little friendliness toward other agile developer practices.)
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Tags : agile, agile2008, Conferences, continuous integration, flex, java, refactoring, RIA, tdd
Categories : Conferences
Continuous Integration with Flex
16 01 2008Earlier today I had posed a question to a mailing list in the .NET community asking about Continuous Integration with Flex in the .NET world. After a couple of answers from people who obviously did not understand the question, because they just told me to google CruiseControl.NET, someone with some knowledge of TDD and Agile practices stepped up and pointed out the obvious point I was trying to make. There currently is no real good way to automate your FlexUnit tests in such a way that a CI server like CC.NET or HudsonCI would know whether or not all of the tests for your Actionscript classes passed or failed.
So I’ve decided to start a Google Code project called agile-flex, where a couple of other developers and I will attempt to build some agile tools for the Flex framework, starting with a test runner that will help enable continuous integration for Java, .NET, or even just plain old Actionscript. The runner will likely be based off an article I found from Aaron Spjut here. In a nutshell we will create a test runner in Adobe AIR that will generate XML output similar to JUnit and NUnit for the CI server to be able to interpret. This will also enable the generation of report artifacts using the JUnit Report tasks or even a custom XSLT if desired. I’ll post more details as the project continues.
UPDATE… The Flex-Mojos project now fulfills this need, so I’ve deleted the Google Code Project that we started for this.
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Tags : .net, agile, continuous integration, flex, flexunit, java, RIA, tdd
Categories : RIA
Viva la RIA-volution
14 01 2008Recently I’ve started working with Flex again after a long hiatus from the technology, and now I remember why I fell in love with the concept of Rich Internet Applications. I learned Flex a few years ago and due to the high cost of its server side components needed to run the applications I never found a home for it in any of my applications. So when I heard the news about Adobe open-sourcing Flex and making the SDK free as well as developing a free open source replacement for its LiveCycle Data Services called BlazeDS, I figured it was time to re-introduce myself to the Flex world. I’ve even found a promising Maven 2 plugin for building flex-apps here (http://code.google.com/p/israfil-mojo). Unfortunately it doesn’t support Flex 3 yet, or have a way to run my FlexUnit tests automatically, but I found it easier to use so far than the ServeBox plugin.
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Tags : flex, Maven, RIA
Categories : RIA
