Google Maps has proven itself to be one of the best mapping systems on the internet. We have also seen a great number of google maps mashups take place (Everything some Subway maps to where is the cheapest gas). I only felt it would be nice to have an intro on how to use the google maps API with in Flex. On that note, it has been four posts since I have done a How-To article, so this is even more fitting. Within this tutorial, I will just go over some basics on how to add and edit Markers on a map and keep track of them in a grid.
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Marcel Flex, Google Maps API, tutorial Actionscript, Flex, howto, tutorial
Whenever Flash 10 came out a few months ago, they made a pretty big change to the security model which did not allow events to send files. Everything had to be handled by human interaction (AKA: MouseEvent.CLICK). Unfortunately that means that you now have to support both Flash 9 and Flash 10 in your flex/actionscript code. You never know when someone is going to upgrade to flash 10 to use your application. The problem is that in a business environment, it’s poor taste to require a business to upgrade everyone to Flash 10 to use your software. In fact, a lot of times, that upgrade is not even an option. If you compile something in Flash 10 though, your clients are greated with a nice message of ‘You must upgrade your Flash player in order to use this’. What we need to do is maintain binary compatibility with Flash 10, however not require it.
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Marcel Flex, Random Notes, tutorial Actionscript, Flex, howto, tutorial
Most all web applications that I have worked on really break down to same types of components. There is usually a grid, perhaps a chart, maybe tab navigator at the top and, of course, a filtering mechanism. Lots of times, you will use the filtering down to the sql level to get data. However, its not always necessary to do that. The DataGrid component within flex does have a filterFunction property and there is no reason we shouldn’t take advantage of that. In some cases, depending on our object model, its tough to do that a “framework level”.
Now when I am coding up framework level components, I do try to keep application specific logic separate from just core components. (common sense. otherwise its not a framework level component). But I feel that a large amount people feel the filtering logic is all application specific and don’t necessarily take the time to write something in a more clean, reusable way. I have come up with a more usuable method of creating and adding filters dynamically at run time.
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Marcel Flex, tutorial Actionscript, Flex, howto, tutorial
In my previous tutorial on BlazeDS, I went over an example over how to setup remote objects with data push. There are however, a lot of instances where someone just wanted to receive data and they aren’t concerned with it being updated., so it turns more into a ‘client requesting data whenever it wants it’ scenario. This article will not be nearly as indepth as the last blazeDS article, but if you have not setup your environment for BlazeDS before, it will probably be in your best interest to check it out.
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Marcel Flex, tutorial Actionscript, blazeds, Flex, tutorial
Now a days, BlazeDS is a pretty well known framework for retrieving data for a flex application. It has even been integrated into a recently released package of Spring. It is an open source, scaled down version of Life Cycle Data Services. It doesn’t have all the glamor as LCDS, but its still 100% useful in most applications.
One of the great features it has taken from LCDS is the ability to support data push. Namely, data push with remote objects, which is great. No more having the client continuously call the server to see if there is new data to be shown. The server is the one who lets the client knows via an httpchannel. So now not only do you get to not have to keep polling, checking for data, but you also get to have remote objects integrated into your application.
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Marcel Flex, tutorial Actionscript, blazeds, Flex, howto, tutorial