Simeon Says

I have been fielding lots of questions from ColdFusion developers who are starting to use the new Flex 2.0 software. I really enjoy being able to help users get the feet wet and over come some of the small hurdles. However I have found that some of the questions I am answering are ones that seem to come up alot. Particularly about CF / Flex remoting setup and problems with the Mystic installers. So I decided to set up a site dedicated to ColdFusion Developers using Flex.

http://www.flexcf.com

I know there are several really great resources for flex developers already in existence, but I really feel like the CF community need a place of its own. The site is very empty right now, but I expect that to change pretty quickly. I have set up the site using Ray Camden’s CanvasWiki and Galleon Forums (Thanks Ray) so its up to the community now to decide if this will be a useful resource. If nothing else it will be a place for me to keep notes on the questions I get asked.

I know there are alot of CF’ers who are excited about the opportunities that flex provides. However if the buzz in my inbox and on my IM is any indicator Beta 2 is really taking off.

The last couple days I have really enjoyed getting to share the joys and troubles of flex with alot of developers. I think its great how many people are getting involved and investing in this new platform.

If you are just getting into flex and want to share your joys or your troubles feel free to drop me a line or comment here.

Well I got the beta 2 software (FDS and Mystic) up and running on my mac last night, so I wanted to test out my flexMessage app. I found that a couple things needed to change for the new update. Mostly just best practices stuff. I had a couple functions that did not have return types set on them, things of that nature.

However something funny I found. When I wrote flexMesssage I set it up so you could double click on a buddy in the list to start a conversation. I tried several ways but couldnt get it to not require a triple click. Eventually I gave up and just commented in the code to come back later. Well with Beta 2 that issue has resolved its self. It never even dawned on my that it might be a bug. So kudos to the flex team for the improvements in the beta 2 software. The debug information in both Flex Data Services and in CF Mystic are much more verbose which could be nice when troubleshooting. Cant wait for this stuff to launch formally.

If you would like more information about my flexMessage app you can visit http://projects.simb.net/flexMessage/trac.cgi

Well with the release of the Beta 2 suite of Flex tools we were treated by the flex team with mac and linux installers for all of the other tools (minus flex builder). However the CF connectivity remains a windows only install. I know it takes time to get software ready for all the platforms so I am not complaining

But being a mac user that doesnt keep me from wanting to make this all work. So I grabbed the windows installer and ran it to get the updated files. I was a bit put off for a bit, because as a part of this release the CF team has updated the jre, however upon a bit of inspection I found that the version they updated to was already the version I was running on my mac. So I trudged ahead moving over the other files, and I was rewarded with an updated Mystic install.

I just dropped these files in over my beta 1 mystic files, and I havent checked to see if the 2 sets of files are different. But in case you want to go for this also, here is the list of files I had to move to update my install. Good Luck!

This should probably have been expected, but it was the only thing that fouled me up in moving my app from beta1 to beta2.

The default names space for flex has changed from “http://www.macromedia.com/2005/mxml” to “http://www.adobe.com/2006/mxml”. This signifies both the company change and the year change.

In compiling with the SDK on my Mac this was the only change I needed to make to be up to date with the software. So your hello world application is now going to look like:

Along with all the new fun tools we got with Beta 2 today we also got an udpate to the Flash Player 8.5. And dont be a slacker ( like me ) and make sure you update your flash player so you can enjoy the new tools

Although the intention has always been for the sdk for be free for all, previously on labs there was no cross platform download. i am very happy to report that there is now a cross-platform SDK download. Not only that, but the charting components are also availble for all.

Although not specifically for mac, the Flex Data Services have installers for Linux, solaris, Windows and a generic java installer. So now we are full go on all fronts Flex.

Unfortunatly it appears the updater for CF is still a windows only install, so I will have to sort out what files have been updated and post about that in the next couple days.

So you want to play with the new code generation utilities in the Adobe Flex CF Eclipse Plugin. How do you get started? Well the first step is to head on over to labs.adobe.com and get the plugin. Its a zip file with 4 folders in it. Just drop those 4 folders into the plugins directory of your Eclipse install. Then restart you workbench.

What is that? Nothing appears to have changed? Well lets just make sure we have the RDS view turned on. In the Eclipse menu choose Window->Show View->Other. That will pop up a nice little window with a tree view full of “views” Expand the RDS part of the tree and select “RDS Dataview”. This will add the RDS database view to your workspace. Now jump into your preferences (menu: Window->Preferences….) and select RDS Configuration from the list on the left. In here you can specify the information to connect to your rds service. Click ok to close the preferences window.

Once that is set up you can open expand your host in the rds view. Find a database you would like to play with, and righ click on a table. At the bottom of the menu you will see an option for “ColdFusion Wizards” then select “Create CFC”. If the steps I followed worked for you you will now see a popup that looks like this.

I will let you play with the rest on your own. But its important to note there are 3 types of generation.

• Active Record CFC ( one file per table)
• Bean CFC & DAO CFC ( couple files per table)
• Flex Data Services Assembler CFC’s

The first 2 in the list you can use with general consumption ColdFusion code as well as with flex. As best as i can tell though, the third option is just for use with Flex Data Services.

Ok, thats all for now. Have fun!

As it turns out RDS is only one part of the plugin. The CF team went way above and beyond and the plugin now includes several types of CFC and AS code generation from DB schema’s.

In the downloads area the plugin is labeled “Download ColdFusion Extensions to Flex Builder 2.0″

So go get it and enjoy the new functionality that can be combined with Flex Builder 2.0 and CFEclipse!

Wow, I just happened across this, but I am happy to see that the new beta was released today. Head on over to labs.adobe.com to get the new downloads.

But just in case you were wondering here is a link to whats change from beta 1 to beta 2.