Aral Balkan on Building Flash applications with Google App Engine.

PureMVC Python / Google App Engine Demo

Paranoid Ferret Productions, who themselves are a great Flex resource, have a list of the ‘Best Adobe Flex Resources and Tutorial Sites‘.

I’ve updated Chandima Cumaranatunge’s excellent PureMVC walk-through to work with the latest version of PureMVC (2.0.3). Although PureMVC has extensive documentation nothing beats a simple demo for wrapping your brain around the framework. The most helpful part of Chandima’s tutorial is when he steps through the sequence of actions which includes initialization and then following a user’s gesture on a round trip through the framework.

1. The Concrete Facade class called ApplicationFacade broadcasts a STARTUP Notification.

2. The STARTUP Notification triggers the StartupCommand command object which registers the KeyDataProxy proxy, and StageMediator mediator.

3. StageMediator mediator registers a KEY_DOWN Event handler to the stage to intercept key presses. It also registers to receive KEYUPDATE Notifications.

4. User presses a key generating a KEY_DOWN Event that is intercepted by the key down event handler in the StageMediator.

5. StageMediator broadcasts a KEYDOWN Notification with the character code of the key in the notification body.

6. The KEYDOWN Notification triggers the StoreKeyCommand command object, which accesses the KeyDataProxy proxy and updates the model (data object).

7. The KeyDataProxy proxy stores the data in a data object (just a property in the proxy in this case).

8. The KeyDataProxy proxy broadcasts a KEYUPDATE Notification with the character code of the key in the notification body.

9. The KEYUPDATE Notification handler in StageMediator intercepts the KEYUPDATE Notification and traces the key value.

In my updated example I trace out each action to clarify when (and in which file) they occur. Make sure you have PureMVC in your class path before running the demo.

The PureMVC framework is considered one of the best for Flash/Flex development (definitely the best documented), I hadn’t checked out the site in a while (which has undergone an overhaul and is much improved!) and since my last visit PureMVC is now available for not only AS2 and AS3 but C#, ColdFusion, Java, Perl, PHP, Python, and Ruby as well.

I should say plans for Ruby as they are looking for a project owner to work on the port. I’d volunteer myself (famous last words) but while I love Ruby I don’t know the ins and outs of the language as well as I do ActionScript.

In any case having one framework “to rule them all” would be a great boost to productivity as you wouldn’t have to mentally switch gears between the front (Flash/Flex) and back (PHP/Ruby etc.) ends.

Aral Balkan shows you how.

Via Flex on Rails…

Using HotRuby it is possible to use straight Ruby to build a Flash app.

Info here.

Some of the more interesting sessions:

Extending Web to the Desktop with AIR
Monday, March 24, 2008
9:00 AM - 10:00 AM US/Pacific

Getting Started with Flash Lite 3 and CS3
Monday, March 24, 2008
11:00 AM - 12:00 PM US/Pacific

Building Rich Internet Applications with Flex 3
Monday, March 24, 2008
4:00 PM - 5:00 PM US/Pacific

Introduction to Adobe Blaze DS
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
9:00 AM - 10:00 AM US/Pacific

Integrating Salesforce.com and Flex
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
11:00 AM - 12:00 PM US/Pacific

Building AIR Applications with Flash CS3
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
1:00 PM - 2:00 PM US/Pacific

Adobe AIR Local Data Storage Options With Emphasis on Using Embedded SQL Databases
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
9:00 AM - 10:00 AM US/Pacific

Flex and Java – Tying the Knot!
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
4:00 PM - 5:00 PM US/Pacific

Flex Data Services
Thursday, March 27, 2008
9:00 AM - 10:00 AM US/Pacific

Blood from a Stone: Flash Game Optimization on Low-end mobile devices
Thursday, March 27, 2008
1:00 PM - 2:00 PM US/Pacific

Flex Visual Data & Charting
Thursday, March 27, 2008
4:00 PM - 5:00 PM US/Pacific

AIR Native Drag and Drop
Friday, March 28, 2008
1:00 PM - 2:00 PM US/Pacific

Flex Architecture
Friday, March 28, 2008
4:00 PM - 5:00 PM US/Pacific

Defend your Castle (where you fling away attacking stick men) will be one of the first WiiWare games released.

Defend your Castle Wii version

Or even better write Flash/Flex Rich Internet Applications with Ruby? Ted Patrick says it may soon be possible.

When Microsoft released Silverlight the one feature that got a lot of people excited was that you could use the language you were most familiar with to build a RIA. Apparently Adobe has an internal project which allows any C or C++ code to run in the Flash Player or on AIR. This means that any language built on C/C++ will also run which means that Java, Python, and my beloved Ruby could also run. Schwing! :)

Ted is a Python guy so he talks about IronPython and JPython but of course Ruby has JRuby and IronRuby so I’m sure the behavior would be similar.

Like many organizations Adobe has lots of legacy C/C++ code ranging from PhotoShop filters, to PDF renderers, to readers and writers of every file format in existence, font libraries, to very complex vector renderers, and text layout code. Beyond Adobe there are many open source libraries that could be leveraged as components as well. The big thing for me is that these are not ports of these libraries, they run identical to the original source code down. For example the behavior of Python in Flash Player is identical to C-Python vs the ported behavior under the IronPython and Jython projects. The goal here is to bring lots of these legacy assets, code libraries, and languages into Flash Player and Adobe AIR perfectly so that any developer can leverage them cross-platform to build software. It would not shock me to see some of these components added into the Flash Player component cache so that they essentially are built into the player on first use.

InfoWorld has more.

Tim let me know that massify.com are looking for a Flex/Flash developer.

Company: massify.com
Job Title: Flash/Flex RIA Developer
Description: Flash/Flex RIA Developer

Massify is a community driven site that brings film creatives and
movie buffs together in the pursuit of great film; we’re using the
power of the web to transform the way films are made - and, in the
process, fund innovative projects that people want to see.

As a member of our team, you’ll help the team define and develop the
user experience for full on Flex based applications being deployed
to a huge audience of end users. No banner ads here. We seek a Flex/
Actionscript programmer with strong CS fundamentals. The ideal
candidate is a bright, logical team-player, with excellent
communication skills.

Required Skills:

2+ years of AS2/AS3 experience
Experience building Flex applications
Familiarity with UNIX, comfortable with a command line
Experience integrating flash/flex with HTTP based REST services
Streaming video experience a plus (RTMP, RTP, RTSP)

Bonus Points:

Experience with Red5/Flash Media Server
Component development with Flash/Flex
Proficiency with PHP/HTML/CSS