The Adobe Flex Framework

Monica Macoveiciuc and Constantin StanFaculty of Computer Science, Alexandru Ioan Cuza University, Iaşi

October, 2009

The Adobe Flex Framework

The Flex framework provides the declarative language, application services, components, and data connectivity developers need to rapidly build rich Internet applications (RIAs) for the browser or desktop.

Flex 3 is a powerful framework that provides enterprise-level components for the Flash Player platform in a markup language format recognizable to anyone with HTML or XML development experience.

The Flex Framework provides components for visual layout, visual effects, data grids, server communication, charts, and much more.

Functionality

The Adobe Flex Framework

MXML is the language developers use to define the layout, appearance, and behaviors of a Flex application. ActionScript 3, an object-oriented language based on industry-standard ECMAScript, is the language that defines the client-side application logic.

Flex includes a prebuilt class library and application services that help developers assemble and build RIAs. These services include data binding, drag-and-drop management, the display system that manages the interface layout, the style system that manages the look and feel of interface components, and the effects and animation system that manages motion and transitions.

The component library provides all of the user interface controls that developers need, from simple buttons, checkboxes, and radio buttons to complex data grids, combo boxes, and rich text editors.

Functionality

The Adobe Flex Framework

The Adobe AIR runtime extends web applications to the desktop, creating new opportunities for more engaging, higher performing online/offline applications. The Flex framework provides native support for the new AIR APIs, and Flex Builder 3 provides all the tools necessary to build, debug, package, and sign applications built on Adobe AIR.

Greatly reduce the size of your Flex application SWF files. In addition to bytecode optimizations in the Adobe Flex 3 compiler, a new persistent framework caching feature in Adobe Flash Player software allows the Flex framework to be cached the first time any Flex application is used.

Flex Remoting and Messaging are both now available to all developers through the open source BlazeDS project. Developers can now start using these powerful Java server integration features.

Functionality

The Adobe Flex Framework

Design patterns can help us design a good Flex Application.

It's considered good practice to divide our application into three parts : The Model, the View, and the Controller.

Bellow are three main Flex architecture frameworks alternatives:

1. No third party framework2. Cairngorm3. PureMVC

Architecture

The Adobe Flex Framework

1. No third party framework

Architecture

The Adobe Flex Framework

2. Cairngorm

Architecture

The Adobe Flex Framework

3. PureMVC

Architecture

Spotify (http://www.spotify.com) is a new way to enjoy music. Simply download and install, before you know it you’ll be singing along to the genre, artist or song of your choice. With Spotify you are never far away from the song you want.

The Terms of use from the http://developer.spotify.com website forbids creating any web interface between other applications and the Spotify Application.( http://developer.spotify.com/en/libspotify/terms-of-use/ )

The documentation of the C library that Spotify offers can be found athttp://developer.spotify.com/en/libspotify/docs/index.html

The response format of the API can be modeled as needed or desired for the fact that if a web service is desired this has to be created. Creating an web service will violate the Terms and conditions that Spotify states. The response format can be in JSON, XML or any other format.

We planed to build an web service and our response format would have been JSON.

Unfortunately we'll use in our mash-up the YouTube API and/or the Upcoming API.

Last.fm is a music service that lets you discover new music you like, based on the music you already listen to.

The Last.fm API allows anyone to build their own programs using Last.fm data, whether they're on the web, the desktop or mobile devices.

The API documentation can be found at http://www.last.fm/api/intro

The requests can be REST requests or XML-RPC request. The sent parameters must be UTF-8 encoded. The response format of the API is XML.

Currently the Lastify application is the demo for the mash up between the Spotify and Last.fm applications.

The application allows searching artists in Last.fm and linking them from Lastify towards their Last.fm URL.

It also allows searching artists within the Spotify player using the URI search.

Due to the Terms of use of Spotify the initial plans have to be changed and make a mash-up with the above specified applications (YouTube or Upcoming).

LASTIFY

LASTIFY

LASTIFY

LASTIFY

Questions?

We thought so…

Thank you!