Flex for Java Architects

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Copyright 2008 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved.
Flex for Java Architects
•
Blaze DS, Maven, Spring & Hibernate
François Le Droff
®
Copyright 2008 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved.
What does François Le Droff do?
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Copyright 2008 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved.
Who is François Le Droff?

Just another Java guy

Adobe Consulting (Paris, France)
ledroff@adobe.com

9 years of experience in IT (mainly in web 1+n.0 JEE app)

OSS geek :

committer (qsos
, xradar
, fna
),

Member of ossgtp
, ParisJUG
, ParisJBUG

speaker at ossgtp
, Solution Linux

blogger :

http://www.droff.com

http://blogs.adobe.com/francoisledroff/
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Copyright 2008 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved.
What about you ?

Good Java/JEE knowledge

Ant and/or Maven

ORM (JPA, EJB, iBatis, Hibernate)

Spring

Test (Selenium, JUnit, Cactus)

Notion of Flex

ActionScript MXML

Flex Remoting, AMF

And may be

BlazeDS, LCDS

FlexUnit

Cairngorm
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Copyright 2008 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved.
In the next 90 minutes…
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Copyright 2008 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved.
In the next 90 minutes…
®
Copyright 2008 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved.
In the next 90 minutes… we’ll review

Flex framework and tools from a Java perspective

BlazeDS and LCDS ES
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Copyright 2008 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved.
In the next 90 minutes… you’ll learn how we integrated 
Spring (Hibernate JPA) with Flex through BlazeDS

BlazeDS remoting SpringFactory

Auto-wired spring service bean into BlazeDS remoting
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Copyright 2008 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved.
In the next 90 minutes… you’ll learn how we build 
Spring BlazeDS Flex application

With Maven

Code generation through flex-annotation

FlexUnit

ASDoc, Dependency management, Quality control
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Copyright 2008 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved.
Flex Frameworks and Tools
From a Java perspective

Developing

Frameworks

Testing

Building
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Copyright 2008 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved.
Flex Frameworks and Tools: Developing 
Flex IDEs

Eclipse

FlexBuilder

Code completion, refactoring, graphical UI editing, profiling

Enterprise Factory IDE

Peter Martin’s Cairngorm plug-in (soon)

IDEA IntelliJ

Netbeans Plugin

vi, emacs
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Copyright 2008 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved.
Flex Frameworks and libraries

MVC frameworks:

PureMVC

Cairngorm micro-architecture

There are two libraries you can use to create your Cairngorm projects

Cairngorm –This is the main Cairngorm library that must always be imported

Cairngorm Enterprise -This is an optional library that must be used if you are
using LCDS

Cairngorm Enterprise was created to remove Cairngorm’s Dependency on LCDS

EnterpriseServiceLocatorprovides support for LCDS Producer and Consumer
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Copyright 2008 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved.
Flex Frameworks and libraries

Inversion of Control (IoC) Container :

flicc: http://flicc.sourceforge.net

parsley: http://www.spicefactory.org/parsley

smarty pants: http://code.google.com/p/smartypants-ioc

LowRA: http://osflash.org/projects/lowra

prana: http://www.pranaframework.org

swiz: http://code.google.com/p/swizframework

vegas: http://code.google.com/p/vegas

fling: http://fling.riaforge.org

flex-ioc: http://code.google.com/p/flex-ioc

mate: http://mate.asfusion.com

…
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Copyright 2008 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved.
Flex Frameworks and libraries

Lots of AS3 and Flex OS components

Lots of commercial Flex components
Flex Ecosystem is expanding very quickly
following a similar path to Enterprise Java
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Copyright 2008 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved.
Flex Logging and Debugging

Similar to LOG4J,

Flex 3 includes a logging
framework

to define custom Log targets.

ThunderBoltAS3 :

custom Flex log target

log to Firebug in Firefox or to a
stand alone AIR console.

Many tools to inspect the component at runtime
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Copyright 2008 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved.
Flex code generation and quality tools

Code Generation

XDoclet : ActionScript Plugin

@actionscript.class

flex-annotations.aixcept.net annotations:

@ActionScript

@Cairngorm

Flex-mojos

JAXB

MDA (acceleo plugin made by AC)

…

Code Quality control

FlexPMD (work in progress engaged by AC)
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Copyright 2008 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved.
Flex Frameworks and Tools: UnitTesting

FlexUnit : http://opensource.adobe.com/wiki/display/flexunit/FlexUnit
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Copyright 2008 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved.
Flex Frameworks and Tools: Unit Testing

FlexUnit

Very similar to JUnit

Event test enabled

Unit Test Code coverage report: FlexCover
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Copyright 2008 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved.
Flex Frameworks and Tools: Testing

Functional Testing

Selenium for Flash

Fluint, FlexMonkey, FunFX, …

Other commercial products based on Adobe’s Flex Automation API :

Mercury QTP

IBM Rational Functional Tester

RIATest

Load and Stress Testing

JMeter, OpenSTA, Grinder

Adobe’s Data Services Stress Testing Framework

Other commercial (Flex/AMF specific) products :

NeoLoad

WebLoad
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Mock Frameworks

mock-as3: http://code.google.com/p/mock-as3

Mock4AS: http://code.google.com/p/mock4as
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Copyright 2008 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved.
Flex Frameworks and Tools: Building 
Ant :

FlexAntTasks

Ant : Antennae
•
Maven :
•
Flex-mojos
•
Alternatives :
•
ServeBox
•
and Israfil
•
Archetypes
•
Continuous Integration :
•
Build server : all those who support Ant and/or Maven :
•
Hudson, CruiseControl, Continuum …
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Copyright 2008 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved.
Flex Frameworks and Tools: Building

FlexUnit
within your build

Maven
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LiveCycle Data
Services and BlazeDS
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Blaze DS Overview : Client

Blaze DS Client
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Blaze DS Overview : Server 
Blaze DS Server

The Blaze DS server runs in a web application on a J2EE application server.
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Copyright 2008 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved.
BlazeDS versus LCDS
BlazeDS
Data Management
RPC Services
Messaging
Service
Adapters
Data Synchronization
Off-line Applications
Data Paging
Web Service
HTTP Service
Remote Object Service
Publish & Subscribe
Collaboration
Real Time Data Push
Proxy Service
Web-tier Compiler Portal Deployment
RIA-PDF Generation
LiveCycle
ColdFusion
Hibernate
SQL
JMS
Java
Custom…
LiveCycle Data Services ES
Data Management
RPC Services
Messaging
Data Synchronization
Off-line Applications
Data Paging
Web Service
HTTP Service
Remote Object Service
Publish & Subscribe
Collaboration
Real Time Data Push
Proxy Service
Web-tier Compiler Portal Deployment
RIA-PDF Generation
LiveCycle
ColdFusion
Hibernate
SQL
JMS
Java
Custom…
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Copyright 2008 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved.
LiveCycle Data Services ES Overview

Highly scalable LiveCycle Data Services ES endpoints.

Assembler architecture: Data Management Services.
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Copyright 2008 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved.
Feature Comparison
Feature
BlazeDS
LiveCycle Data Services ES –
“Corfu”
Java Remoting
√√
Web Proxy
√√
JMS Adapter
√√
AJAX Client Libraries
√√
Administrative Console
√√
Clustered Messaging
√√
Pub/Sub Messaging
√√
Web container-based messaging service (100’s of
clients/CPU)
√√
Dedicated messaging service (1000’s of clients/CPU)
√
Per-client Quality of Service
√
Data Management Service
√
Data Paging
√
Flex-LiveCycle Integration
√
RIA-to-PDF Generation
√
Offline Data Synchronization (AIR)
√
WSRP/Portal Integration
√
SiteMinder Integration
√
28
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Copyright 2008 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved.
Review of Flex, BlazeDS,
Spring Integration
Techniques
…
built with
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Copyright 2008 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved.
By the way …
What is Maven ?
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Copyright 2008 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved.
What is Maven anyway ? (very short definition)

A build tool

A dependency management tool
•
•
A documentation and quality
reporting tool
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Copyright 2008 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved.
What is Maven anyway ? (its architecture)
Plugin
jar
Plugin
flex-mojos
Plugin
war
Projects
to build
Maven Core
Local machineRemote repository or local install
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Copyright 2008 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved.
What is Maven anyway ? (its plug-ins, a few of them…)
•Antlr
•Ant
•AntRun
•AspectJ
•Assembly
•Assembly-report
•Cargo
•Castor
•Changelog
•Changes
•Commons-attributes
•Checkstyle
•Clean
•Clover
•Csharp
•Cobertura
•Compiler
•Deploy
•Ear
•Eclipse
•Ejb
•Ejb3
•Exec
•Flex-mojos
•Flex-annotations
•Groovy
•Help
•Hibernate2
•Idea
•Install
•Issue
•It
•Jalopy
•Jar
•Javacc
•Javadoc
•Javancss
•Jboss
•Jcoverage Jdepend
•Jdiff
•Jelly
•Jetty
•Jpox
•Jspc
•Jxr
•MAnt
•Native
•One
•Par
•Plugin
•Pmd
•Project-info-reports
•Rar
•Release
•Repository
•Resources
•Repository
•Sablecc
•Site
•Slimdog
•Source
•Surefire
•Surefire-re
port
•Taglist
•Tomcat
•Verifier
•Xslt
•War
•Wsdl2java
•Xdoclet
•Xmlbeans
•XRadar
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Copyright 2008 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved.
What is Maven anyway ? (a common project format and organization)

Maven is really a process of applying patternsto a build infrastructure
in order to provide a coherent view of software projects.

A Common project metadata format

POM = Project Object Model = pom.xml

Contains metadata about the project

Location of directories, Developers/Contributors, Issue tracking system, Dependencies,
Repositories to use, etc
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Copyright 2008 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved.
What is Maven anyway ? (a common project format and organization)

A common directory organization

Our sample of 6 nested projects :
•src/
–main/
•java/
•flex/
•resources/
•webapp/
–test/
•java/
•flex/
•resources/
–site/
®
Copyright 2008 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved.
What is Maven anyway ? (a common way to build application)
plug-ins
user
e.g. mvn install
generate-
sources
compile
test
install
deploy
package
integration-
test
Well-known phases
mojo
mojo
mojo
mojo
mojo
bindings
The lifecycle depends on the project type (packaging)
Defined in pom.xml (pom, jar, ear, war, etc)
Ex: <packaging>swc</packaging>
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Copyright 2008 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved.
What is Maven anyway ? (it’s even much more)
Artifact repository :
Used to store all kind of artifacts
SWCs, SWFs, JARs, EARs, WARs, EJBs, ZIPs, plugins, …
All project interactions go through the repository
No more relative paths!
Easy to share between teams
Dependency management
Transitive dependency management
Snapshot handling
Multi-module built
Environment dependent builds based on profile
Project documentation site and report
Project templating through archetype
A
B
C
D
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Copyright 2008 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved.
Maven : Archetypes

Archetype is a Maven project templating toolkit.

an original pattern or model from which all other things of the same kind are made.

provides a great way to enable developers quickly in a way consistent with best practices
employed by your project or organization

http://maven.apache.org/plugins/maven-archetype-plugin/index.html
®
Copyright 2008 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved.
How do I integrate Flex,
BlazeDS, and Spring ?
(with Maven)
How do I write less code
through maven archetype
flex annotation code generation
and auto-wiring techniques?
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Copyright 2008 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved.
Objectives

Generate a project
through a maven
archetype

Build, deploy and test
(on jetty and hsqldb)
Exercise 4 –Project Generation and Build
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Copyright 2008 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved.
Generate and Build your project (2mn)
•
The archetype is already installed on your machine, just type :
•
mvn archetype:generate -DartifactId=maxLab -DarchetypeCatalog=local
•
Choose the autowired BlazeDS Spring archetype
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Copyright 2008 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved.
A Maven multi-module project approach

Discover your «mavenized» Flex BlazeDS Spring project, its modules :

java_* are plain old maven java projects

flex_* are flex-mojos project

blazeds _service_config is a shared resource handled through maven assembly
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Copyright 2008 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved.
Deploy and test your project (2mn)
•
Go to the newly created project root
•
Launch the build :
•
mvn install
•
Go the java web application module root to deploy your web application on
a jetty instance :
•
mvn jetty:run
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Copyright 2008 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved.
Deploy and test your project (2mn)
•
http://localhost:8080/fna_java_webapp/
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Copyright 2008 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved.
Import your
Flex N Spring
subprojects into Eclipse
Exercise 5 (Optional)
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Copyright 2008 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved.
Import your projects into Eclipse
•
Note that once your project
imported , you may still
•
Use your favorite servers and
eclipse plugins wtp facilities
•
Debug your application
•
On the server side
•
On the client side
•
Manage your dependencies and
maven build through m2eclipse
plugin.
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Copyright 2008 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved.
Review the
Flex-N-Spring project
Architecture
Exercise 6 :
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Copyright 2008 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved.
Domain
Layer
Cairngorm applied to Flex N Spring
Integration Tier
View Layer
Presentation
Layer
Arthur
arthur@dent.com
Ford-ford@perfect.com
Zaphod –zaphod@email.com
Arthur –arthur@dent.com
Tricia–tricia@mcmillan.com
Marvin = marvin@email.com
Add a ContactContact list
Add a Contact
CMD
CMD
Business
Delegate
TodoList
Spring Auto Wiring
model.getTodoList
Cairngorm
Event
Service
Service
Service
Service
Service
ToDoList
FrontController
ToDoList
CMD
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Copyright 2008 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved.
new RemoteObject("todoService");
A Flex application auto-wired to a BlazeDS/Spring back-end
Flex Application
Cairngorm
Delegate
•RemoteObject(“TodoService”’)
BlazeDSwar
Message
Broker
Spring
Auto
Wiring
Service
Spring container
Spring
Factory
TodoService
DAO JPA
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Copyright 2008 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved.
A few magic details : Spring AutoWiring

With a simple SpringFactory (and/or JavaAdapter) approach, you need to
configure each new Java remote object service in remoting-config.xml.

@RemotingDestination (JDK5 annotation) allows you to autowire Spring
beans directly into BlazeDS.
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Copyright 2008 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved.
A few magic details : Spring AutoWiring

The SpringAutowiringBootstrapService checks all @RemotingDestination
annotated classes

registers them within BlazeDS at runtime.

dynamically creates the Spring Factory.
®
Copyright 2008 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved.
Review the
Flex-N-Spring project
code generation
technique
Exercise 7 (optional) :
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Copyright 2008 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved.
VO Code Generation

The flex remoted objects aregenerated through flex-annotations

Just add to your java remoted object @ActionScript and @ActionScriptProperty annotations
®
Copyright 2008 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved.
VO Code Generation

Add the flex-annotations factory to your maven build
®
Copyright 2008 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved.
Objectives

Projects reports

Dependencies report

Unit test reports

Code metrics
Exercise 8 (Optional) –Build Maven Site
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Copyright 2008 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved.
The Maven site
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Copyright 2008 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved.
The Maven site
®
Copyright 2008 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved.
The Maven site
®
Copyright 2008 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved.
The Maven site
®
Copyright 2008 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved.
The Maven site
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Copyright 2008 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved.
Maven and Spring for Flex :
Summary
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Copyright 2008 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved.
Maven and Spring for Flex : Summary

This maven and spring integration approach allows you to

capitalize on your in-house Java/JEE/Maven/Spring expertise, techniques and tools

write less code (Most of the integration plumbing is generated)

rely on a efficient build (continuous integration, test, dependencies and quality checks,
documentation, release)

The price to enter :

Time consumingtasks to initiate the project :

set up the project (modules) structure organization

Write your build file, your somehowcomplex pom.xml files :

configure/identify the classpath , project dependencies, maven plugins

configure the code generation and autowiring tools

The Solution: eliminate the ramp-up time by using maven archetype

You still have to configure Eclipse (and FB) the «maven» way
®
Copyright 2008 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved.
Resources
®
Copyright 2008 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved.
Resources: Learning

Flex

ActionScript Developer Site-http://www.adobe.com/devnet/actionscript/

Flex Developer Site -http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flex/

Flex Development Guide -http://learn.adobe.com/wiki/display/Flex/Getting+Started

Flex 3 Language Reference –http://livedocs.adobe.com/flex/3/langref/

LiveCycle Data Services ES -http://www.adobe.com/products/livecycle/dataservices/

BlazeDS

Blaze DS -http://www.adobe.com/go/opensource_blazeds

Blaze DS Developer Guide -http://livedocs.adobe.com/blazeds/1/blazeds_devguide

Blaze DS Javadoc -http://livedocs.adobe.com/blazeds/1/javadoc/

Adobe Labs -http://labs.adobe.com/
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Copyright 2008 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved.
Resources: Learning

LiveCycle Data Services ES

LiveCycle Data Services ES -
http://www.adobe.com/products/livecycle/dataservices/

LCDS ES Developer Guide -http://www.adobe.com/go/lcds26_devguide

LCDS ES Javadoc -
http://livedocs.adobe.com/livecycle/8.2/programLC/programmer/javadoc/index.
html

LiveCycle Data Services ES Language Reference -
http://livedocs.adobe.com/livecycle/8.2/programLC/common/langref/index.html

LCDS ES Stress Testing Framework -
http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Flex_Stress_Testing_Framework
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Copyright 2008 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved.
Resources: Frameworks and Tools

Frameworks

Cairngorm -http://opensource.adobe.com/wiki/display/cairngorm/Cairngorm

PureMVC –http://puremvc.org

Prana -http://www.pranaframework.org

Code Generation:

Flex-annotations http://flex-annotations.aixcept.net/

XDoclet ActionScript plugin http://xdoclet.codehaus.org/Actionscript+plugin

Acceleo http://www.acceleo.org/pages/accueil/en

Spring flex integration projects

@RemotingDestination annotation :

http://marceloverdijk.blogspot.com/2008/01/code-by-convention-with-flex-and-
spring.html
®
Copyright 2008 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved.
Resources: Frameworks and Tools

Building Maven

Maven archetype: http://maven.apache.org/plugins/maven-archetype-plugin/index.html

Maven presentations : http://blogs.codehaus.org/people/vmassol/

Maven Flex plugins:

Flex-mojos http://docs.flex-mojos.info/

ServeBox http://www.servebox.com/foundry/doku.php?id=m2f2plugin

Israfil http://www.israfil.net/projects/mojo/maven-flex2-plugin

Maven Flex (flex-mojos) archetypes:

http://code.google.com/p/fna/

http://blogs.adobe.com/francoisledroff/

http://code.google.com/p/maven-blazeds-spring-archetype/

Flex-Mojo tutorial

The Flex, Spring and BlazeDS full stack

http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flex/articles/fullstack_pt3_print.html
®
Copyright 2008 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved.
Resources: Frameworks and Tools

Building Ant

Antennae -http://code.google.com/p/antennae/

Testing

FlexUnit -http://opensource.adobe.com/wiki/display/flexunit/FlexUnit

Flexcover -http://code.google.com/p/flexcover/

ThunderBolt AS3 Console -http://code.google.com/p/flash-
thunderbolt/wiki/ThunderBoltAS3Console

Libraries

Google Code –Lots of Flex libraries and frameworks

Flex.org -http://flex.org/software/components
®
Copyright 2008 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved.
References : Graphics and Photos

Media

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Netbeans-Duke.png

https://duke.dev.java.net/images/misc/SantaDuke.png

https://duke.dev.java.net/images/comfyChair/index.html

http://onflash.org/ted/2007/07/flex-directory-150-consulting-firms.php

http://flickr.com/photos/nicozz/1107511223/

http://flickr.com/photos/flattop341/1085739925/
®
Copyright 2008 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved.