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Steven Webster

Steven Webster

Adobe Consulting
www.richinternetapps.com

Leon Tanner

Leon Tanner

Adobe Consulting

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Introducing the Cairngorm Store
  3. The Cairngorm Store: addressing four key challenges
  4. Keeping state on the client
  5. Keeping an object model consistent between Flex and Java
  6. Binding the model and view together
  7. Enter the Model Locator pattern
Created:
23 May 2008
User Level:
Beginner
Products:
Flex

Developing Flex RIAs with Cairngorm microarchitecture – Part 2: Keeping state on the client

In Part 1 of this series, we introduced Cairngorm, a lightweight technical architecture that simplifies much of the complexity that recurs in the development of large-scale rich Internet applications, called enterprise RIAs.

In Part 2, we describe one of the challenges you’ll face in developing enterprise RIAs—specifically, how to keep state on the client. You'll learn about two fundamental patterns in the Cairngorm architecture: the Value Object pattern and the Model Locator pattern. You will also gain a better understanding of the clarity you can achieve within your own Flex application development by using these patterns.

Requirements

In order to make the most of this series, you need the following software and files:

Flex Builder 3

Cairngorm version 2.2

Cairngorm Store

Throughout the series you will find references to code taken from an e-commerce application named Cairngorm Store. You may use this sample application to gain a better understanding of Cairngorm, but please consider it only as a guide. Adobe is not responsible for maintaining the Cairngorm Store application.

Prerequisites

Read Developing Flex RIAs with Cairngorm microarchitecture – Part 1: Introducing Cairngorm before reading this part.

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About the authors

Steven Webster is the practice director for Rich Internet Applications at Adobe. Steven Webster was a technical director at iteration::two, a world-leading Rich Internet Application consultancy based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Steven is the author of Reality J2EE: Architecting for Flash MX and coauthored ActionScript 2.0 Design Patterns for Rich Internet Applications (ActionScript 2.0 Dictionary) and Developing Rich Clients with Macromedia Flex with Alistair McLeod. Steven speaks regularly at conferences and user group meetings on technical and business aspects of RIAs. Steven is the core contributor to the open-source Cairngorm project, a microarchitecture for RIAs based on J2EE patterns which was innovated by iteration::two over a number of Flash and Flex RIA developments.

Leon Tanner is a Senior Technical Consultant at Adobe Consulting and relishes working on some of the most challenging and interesting Flex-based projects on a daily basis.  Having held a passion for both software development and visual design long before his career started, he fell for Flex as the perfect tool for creating highly engaging and visually stunning applications.  Leon adopted Cairngorm as far back as the Flex 1.0 days and has continued to promote it since.