Video: Flex Best Practices
Tuesday, 22 July 2008
Here is a recording from my presentation about Flex Best Practices / Flex Architectural Patterns at the NLJUG. Sorry that the audio is not great on this one. It turned into more of a discussion than a presentation. Let me know what you think.
No. 1 — July 23rd, 2008 at 3:54 am
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No. 2 — July 23rd, 2008 at 4:15 am
James thanks for posting your preso, great stuff!!
I’m interested to learn more about the Service Bus approach you mentioned you often use for Flex applications. If you have any links or code you could share on this that would be great.
Cheers, Mike G.
No. 3 — July 23rd, 2008 at 7:33 am
Would it be possible to get your power point slides? Also, could you provide your code for working with a Service Bus?
Also, the service bus framework that you were discussing (you couldn’t remember the name)…was it LCDS (LiveCycle Data Services)?
No. 4 — July 23rd, 2008 at 7:56 am
I’ll try to get my slides added here soon.
The message / service bus framework is Mate:
http://mate.asfusion.com
No. 5 — July 23rd, 2008 at 9:21 am
The slides are here:
http://www.jamesward.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/ria_best_practices.ppt
No. 6 — July 23rd, 2008 at 10:37 am
Does FlexBuilder provide any support to manage modular apps when the main app is in one Eclipse project and various modules are in other Eclipse projects? Because modules are all loaded at runtime via the filename, I have to path specific to my Eclipse workspace and project structure. That differs from how I’m going to deploy the swfs in my production environment. Also, different projects may exist on different paths for different team members. So we all have to manage our module paths differently :(
regards,
-Chris
No. 7 — July 23rd, 2008 at 5:15 pm
Hi Chris,
Usually for large projects you should use a build tool like Maven or Ant to handle compiling the modules. That way you can have better control over how the modules are named, deployed, and loaded.
-James
No. 8 — July 23rd, 2008 at 6:53 pm
Speaking of Maven…how do you use it to build a Flex/Java app (i.e. something you deploy to a web container, which might use LCDS or BlazeDS, see this link for the type of project I am referring to: http://corlan.org/2008/06/05/creating-a-combined-flexjava-project-in-flex-builder-wo-lcdsblazeds/).
Even just a regular flex app…how do you do it?
No. 9 — July 23rd, 2008 at 9:53 pm
Hi Craig,
Check out:
http://flex-mojos.googlecode.com/
And:
https://bugs.adobe.com/jira/browse/SDK-12730
-James
No. 10 — July 24th, 2008 at 3:14 am
Hi! Thanks for the slides! One question: I’m very interested in your view on the ’service bus’ approach. I suppose you see it as an alternative to the rather ‘heavy weight’ MVC approach? Some thoughts (or some documentation even if it’s not Flex based) would be very helpful.
No. 11 — July 24th, 2008 at 7:24 am
Hi Tom,
My personal preference for large Flex applications is for a service bus approach as the overall application architecture, coupled with modules, and some hand rolled MVC for the micro architecture (self-contained with a module).
-James
No. 12 — July 24th, 2008 at 7:42 am
Thanks for the feedback! Are there any service bus frameworks for Flex or non-Flex out there that I could use as a reference?
No. 13 — July 24th, 2008 at 11:02 am
[...] Desenvolver usando as melhores práticas de qualquer linguagem de programação tem sido bastante comentado entre os desenvolvedores de todo o mundo, pois traz uma série de benefícios para as aplicações a longo prazo. Além de utilizar os padrões de mercado, é mais fácil de dar manutenção. A apresentação com as melhores práticas para desenvolver Flex e ActionScript 3 está disponível aqui. [...]
No. 14 — July 24th, 2008 at 7:28 pm
I’ve successfully hooked up Flex to ActiveMQ by using BlazeDS and LCDS (LiveCycle Data Services). The bus would come later in my prototyping but it’s a good start.
No. 15 — July 25th, 2008 at 5:27 am
James:
Do you have any details/info on the sections of the presentation you didn’t cover in the video (testing, scalability, security)?
One question (you hopefully know) I have is do you know how to access a user certification stored in a browser from Flex? Or if there is another method how to get it into flex?
No. 16 — July 25th, 2008 at 8:13 am
Hi Tom,
Check out Mate: http://mate.asfusion.com
Codecraig,
For testing check out FlexUnit and the Flex Automated Testing Framework. Scalability is a broad topic. But in general Flex applications scale much better than traditional web applications because more is being done on the client. Since Flex uses the browser networking stack security in Flex is similar to web applications. There isn’t any direct way to handle certificates in Flex. The browser handles certificates and usually Flex applications don’t need to do anything with them.
-James
No. 17 — July 25th, 2008 at 6:02 pm
Can you post the video up on Adobe Media Player for offline viewing?
cheers
No. 18 — July 25th, 2008 at 10:02 pm
Hi James,
I met you briefly today after your presentation, and asked you about the First Steps to Flex book (can’t actually remember the exact), but you’d already run out of copies. Out of curiosity, when and where will the book be available?
No. 19 — July 26th, 2008 at 10:57 am
Hi James,
Great video!! There are a ton of great tips in here. Thanks for posting!
Here are two articles that are directly related to your video I thought they might help some people out:
Flex best practices – Part 1: Setting up your Flex project
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flex/articles/best_practices_pt1.html
Mate: Event driven framework for Flex
http://www.flashmagazine.com/Reviews/detail/mate_event_driven_framework_for_flex/
Kind regards,
Sean
No. 20 — July 28th, 2008 at 12:18 pm
@NZ – I’ll look into that.
@Laurie – First Steps in Flex hasn’t officially been released yet. Hopefully it will be in the next few months. Check back here for updates.
@Sean – Thanks for the links! Both are great articles!
No. 21 — August 7th, 2008 at 8:02 pm
What was that tool you used for the screencast? I really liked how you could zoom in and out during your presentation.
No. 22 — August 8th, 2008 at 1:26 pm
Hi Matt,
I use Camtasia. It works great.
-James
No. 23 — August 12th, 2008 at 1:06 am
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No. 24 — August 14th, 2008 at 7:24 am
I’d like to add my voice to the rest of the guys asking for the video to be put up somewhere where we can download it. It’s too long to view all in one go during my lunch hour but if I want to view the second half I have to wait for the swf to download all over again…
Also I too would be really interested to see some more of the rest of the presentation
Thanks,
Ed.
No. 25 — August 14th, 2008 at 9:09 am
What format / codec would you all prefer?
-James
No. 26 — August 18th, 2008 at 11:01 am
I agree some downloadable format is key. I would like to listen to this on the go.
No. 27 — August 18th, 2008 at 12:45 pm
Hi Andrew,
What format would you like?
-James
No. 28 — August 18th, 2008 at 10:15 pm
[...] Watch this video on jamesward.com [...]
No. 29 — August 22nd, 2008 at 1:50 am
How about just allowing us to download the movie swf? Alternatively, any format that Media Player will handle.
And don’t forget to add all the stuff you didn’t get time to present……
Thanks,
Ed.
No. 30 — August 25th, 2008 at 5:14 am
Hi Ed,
Here is the link to download the SWF:
http://content.screencast.com/users/jlward4th/folders/Default/media/2a9e80b1-6231-4e57-ac79-b2c37c0fb3a4/flex_best_practices.swf?downloadOnly=true
Let me know if that works for you.
-James
No. 31 — August 25th, 2008 at 5:29 am
download works for me.
Thanks!
No. 32 — October 12th, 2008 at 9:32 am
an h.264 version would help making this video more portable for ipod/pvr watching
No. 33 — October 22nd, 2008 at 5:41 am
Hi James, great video, thanks for posting.
You mentioned rolling out your own very simple service bus rather than using MATE – if you have an example available I’d love to see it.
Cheers,
Neil
No. 34 — October 22nd, 2008 at 5:43 pm
Hi Neil,
This will be in the book Bruce Eckel and I are working on called “First Steps in Flex”. It’s not out yet but you can join the announce list at:
http://www.firststepsinflex.com
-James
No. 35 — December 4th, 2008 at 10:45 pm
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