Flex Article

Programming Flex 2 excerpts: From framework utilities to remote data communication

Note: This article was created based on Flex 2. Minor changes in the description and code may be necessary before it can be applied to Flex 3.

Important note: Effective with the release of Adobe LiveCycle ES, the Adobe Flex Data Services 2 server product has been rebranded as a Solution Component of LiveCycle ES. This article was written based on Flex Data Services but will likely work as is with LiveCycle Data Services ES. Any articles referring to or using ColdFusion and Flex Data Services are not compatible with LiveCycle Data Services ES. To learn about the new capabilities of LiveCycle Data Services ES, see the tutorials in the LiveCycle Developer Center and read about Adobe LiveCycle Data Services ES.

Programming Flex 2 is a project-based tutorial that's designed to be the definitive guide to creating rich media applications with Adobe Flex 2. Written by Chafic Kazoun and Joey Lott, and reviewed by Adobe engineers and a team of industry leaders, it's aimed at developers—including those using Flex 1.x, Java, and .NET solutions—who need to get up to speed quickly and thoroughly on Flex 2.

This is the second book release in the Adobe Developer Library co-publishing partnership of Adobe and O'Reilly. We've made some of the chapters available to you below. This article has been updated with the chapters from the completed book, published in April 2007. You can order it now from the O'Reilly store.

Programming Flex 2 © 2007 Chafic Kazoun and Joey Lott. Reproduced by permission of O'Reilly Media Inc. All rights reserved.

Requirements

To complete this tutorial you'll need to install the following:

Flex 2

• Try
• Buy

Download the chapter excerpts:

• Chapter 8: Framework utilities and advanced component concepts (PDF, 158K)
• Chapter 12: Working with data (PDF, 116K)
• Chapter 16: Remote data communication (PDF, 121K)

From the foreword

By Mark Anders, senior principal scientist at Adobe Systems

One of the things that makes frameworks such as Flex so great is that they provide a rich architecture and lots of prebuilt software components that enable you to build software much more quickly than if you had to write it yourself. And the best frameworks, of which Flex is one, allow you to deeply customize and extend the provided functionality so that you are not limited in your creations.

With all of this, however, comes a degree of complexity. We put a ton of effort into making sure that things are as consistent as possible, that the right design patterns are used, and that there is the right balance of ease of use and flexibility, all in an effort to make things as simple to learn and use as possible. With that said, there's nothing like a good book to take you through the concepts so that you can really understand what's going on.

What I really like about Programming Flex 2 is that not only does it take you through the breadth of what Flex provides, but it also takes you deep into how it works. It explains the high-level concepts as well as points out the finer details of what's really happening.

I also like that Programming Flex 2 takes a practical approach, explaining common techniques of how ActionScript programs typically work in ways that go beyond simply explaining the classes that Flex provides.

Both Chafic Kazoun and Joey Lott are ideal people to present this information. Both are long-time Flash developers, are well known in the Flash community, and are among the elite of the Flash development world. Each of them has been using Flex for a long time.

I think that the depth of their Flash experience is part of what makes Programming Flex 2 so special. Their mastery of the Flash Player API combined with their extensive knowledge of Flex enable them to not just tell you how to leverage the features Flex provides, but to do so with a thorough understanding of the entire system.

About the author