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!