Getting Started with Flex 2 > Lessons > Retrieve and Display Data

Retrieve and Display Data

To provide data to your application, Adobe Flex includes components designed specifically for interacting with HTTP servers, web services, or remote object services (Java objects). These components are called remote procedure call (RPC) service components.

Unlike web applications built with Adobe ColdFusion, PHP, or similar server technologies, Flex applications cannot connect directly to a database. They interact with data using services. For example, you can insert an HTTP service in a Flex file to interact with a ColdFusion file that retrieves data from a MySQL database, converts it to XML, and then feeds it to your Flex application.

In this lesson, you create a simple blog reader that retrieves recent posts and lets users read the first few lines of the posts. You use an RPC service component called HTTPService to retrieve data from an RSS feed, and then you bind the data to a Label, DataGrid, TextArea, and LinkButton control.

In this lesson, you'll complete the following tasks:

Set up your project

Review your access to remote data sources

Insert and position the blog reader controls

Insert a HTTPService component

Populate a DataGrid control

Display a selected item

Create a dynamic link

Flex 2.01