This is a user’s guide for the Flex Application Starter Toolkit (FAST) software toolkit that helps you develop Flex applications easier and faster. The toolkit is free and available for download through this article.

FAST addresses two fundamental aspects of Flex application development: event logging and data communications. To support event logging, FAST provides an API modeled after Java’s log4j and a Flex-based event display console. For data communications, FAST exposes a simplified programming interface that provides robust error handling, client-side data caching, diagnostic and performance information, and an underlying architecture that supports large applications and facilitates team development.

This toolkit embodies lessons learned from hands-on experience architecting and implementing over a dozen large scale, production-quality Rich Internet Applications. The toolkit was created by the Macromedia Consulting (MC) Team, whose purpose is to ensure the success of leading edge, large-scale Flex application development efforts. MC recognized a common set of problems that arose in nearly every project. Solving these problems required software design and implementation work that did not contribute directly to the functional requirements of the project; rather, the work done accomplished necessary “scaffolding” or infrastructure functionality. By packaging and distributing this toolkit, the MC team hopes to liberate others in the Flex development community from the need to recreate equivalent functionality on other projects.

Requirements

To complete this tutorial you will need to install the following software and files:

Macromedia Flex

• Try
• Buy

Tutorials and sample files:

• Flex Application Starter Toolkit (FAST) (655 KB)

The download includes the following:

The FAST toolkit

• The FAST library (Flex source)
• FAST API documentation (ASDoc)
• The FAST User’s Guide (contains the same information as this article)

FAST example applications

• Flex source
• Java source and executable files for the server-side programs with which the sample applications communicate
• Installation instructions, including snippets for required changes to flex-config.xml and server-config.wsdd

FAST readme.txt for the FAST toolkit (TXT 4K)

• You can run the sample programs described in this article at:
  flexapps.macromedia.com/fast/index.html
• Read more documentation for the FAST API at:
  flexapps.macromedia.com/fast/docs/apiAsDoc/index.html

The next sections introduce Echo, the MC trace and introspection tool, and describe how to use FAST data communications features.

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