Boyzoid's Blog & Stuff - Flex Stuff

The Adobe Developer Community Rules!

Tue, 15 Jun 2010 16:02:00 -0400

Over the last month or so, I sat down to try and write this article several times. Each time, I was so over come with emotion that I simply could not finish it. After the influx of email, Facebook and Twitter messages I have received recently, I decided I need to get this done.

When I was younger, my father once told me, "If you surround yourself with good people, you will never have anything to fear." I do not think I ever really understood what he meant by that until recently.

The last few months have been some of the most difficult and trying times I have ever experienced. I am not sure how I would have fared without the support of my family, friends and the Adobe developer community. After the death of my father, my family was astounded at the level of support offered to us by people they had never met. More than one of you brought tears to our eyes with your kind words on my father's online obituary. The donations made by so many have also helped alleviate some stresses as well.

The kind words and offers of assistance given the recent news from Alagad have been even more overwhelming. Words are not enough to describe the gratitude I, and my family, feel for everyone who has extended a hand.

I used to think that the saying 'you are judged by the company you keep' was unfair. After the last few months, and seeing how incredible the people I have surrounded myself with truly are, I have started to hope I will be judged by the company I keep, because you guys are an amazing bunch, and I am both honored and humbled to be in your company.

Even though I feel it does not seem adequate, Thank You, everyone. The Adobe developer community rules!

Spam on AllYourFlexAreBelongToUs.com

Thu, 04 Feb 2010 12:10:00 -0400

My good friend, Dan Wilson, pointed out to me a short while ago that there was some spam that had made it onto the Flex Blog aggregator, All You Flex Are Belong To Us.

It seems that one of the Feedburner RSS feeds that was being used for one of the blogs was taken over by someone else. I have updated the feed in question and have deleted the 'spam' entries.

Sorry about any issue this may have caused.

AllYourFlexAreBelongToUs Contact Form Issues

Tue, 09 Jun 2009 20:09:00 -0400

I hate to say this, but if you sent a message via the contact form at AllYourFlexAreBelongToUs over the last few months, I just now got the messages and fulfilled any requests to have feeds added.

I chalk this up to a change in mail servers, a rogue rule in my email client and my own inattentiveness causing me to miss the messages. If you sent a request to have your feed added and you do not see it show up on the feed list tonight, please let me know.

Sorry for any confusion or frustration.

Help Me Help a Friend

Fri, 16 Jan 2009 11:57:00 -0400

Sometime around the New Year, Joe Rinehart's wife, Dale, was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis (MS). For those who do not know Joe, he is the author of Model-Glue and a tremendous asset to the ColdFusion community.

Myself and several other members of the ColdFusion community decided that we wanted to pool our resources and try to help offset some of the large medical bills Joe and Dale will surely begin to receive.

If you would like to help us help Joe and Dale, please visit http://www.helpsupportjoeanddale.com/ and make a small donation.

Thanx in advance!

What Music Puts You In The Zone?

Wed, 21 May 2008 15:55:00 -0400

Recently, my wife's desktop was acting up and for about 2 days I was unable to play music while I was working. I forgot how difficult it is for me to code in silence (or near silence). This got me thinking, when I need to focus and just crank out code, there is a certain album I listen to, James Taylor LIve (CD1 and CD2). For some reason, that album always puts me in the zone and I can code like a madman.

So, when you need to be heads down, and crank out code like its no body's business, what do you listen to?

Hey big boy, want to see my Iron Man?

Tue, 15 Apr 2008 11:25:00 -0400

CF.Objective() starts in a few weeks on May 1. Coincidentally Iron Man is being released the following day. If you would be interested in seeing the movie with some of your favorite (or maybe not so favorite) ColdFusion geeks, leave a comment here, and be sure to subscribe. I will post details of when and where we will be going to see the movie.

Do You Have Mad (or even just slightly irked) Design Skills?

Wed, 26 Mar 2008 09:36:00 -0400

A while back I launched AllYourFlexAreBelongToUs.com, a Flex blog aggregator. So far, the sire is doing better than I could have hoped. I am now ready to take the next step. I want to offer "I am aggregated by...." buttons for my aggregatees ( I just now made that up) to add to their sites. There is one big problem, my design skills are...how should I say this...pathetic.

If you have design skills that surpass a 4 year-old and are willing/able to help out, it would be much appreciated. The only thing I ask is that the buttons stay true to the color scheme on the site.

What's in it for you? Well, honestly, I don't have much to offer except my never ending gratitude and credit for designing the buttons. But be rest assured your work will be viewed by millions thousands hundreds dozens of people.

If I happen to get more than one submission, I will probably put it to a public vote as to which one will be used.

Thanx in advance!

PagableArrayCollection Updated

Mon, 25 Feb 2008 14:48:00 -0400

A while back, I started working on a custom Flex component that would allow for easy pagination of data in an array collection. I am happy to announce that I have made quite a few updates, the most obvious being that the PagableArraycolelction now supports sorting and filtering.

For more information, get out the project site on RIA Forge.

How Do You Set Up Your Development Environment?

Fri, 14 Dec 2007 13:11:00 -0400

We were recently discussing setting up development environments in the #coldfusion channel on DalNet IRC. This is a discussion that pops up form time to time, so I figured I would share how I set up my development environment.

I use Apache for my development web server, and for each project, I set up a new 'virtual host' so that each project can run form its own web root. I really have no good explanation for doing this other than its the way I like running my projects. I give each project a 'serverName' like blog.dev. This just helps me be aware of whether I am on dev or production, and makes it so I have to type less.

Then I set up a new entry in my HOSTS file for blog.dev and point it to 127.0.0.1.

To make editing httpd.conf and HOSTS easier to edit, I set up a project in Eclipse that points to my {apache root}/conf folder. Inside of that project, I create a linked file to my HOSTS file. Now from within Eclipse, I can edit my httpd.conf file and my HOSTS file.

I typically will structure my project so that I have a structure that looks similar to:

{projectRoot}
     flex-src (if its a Flex project)
    support (this is where I put project documents, associated files, artwork, etc)
     wwwroot this is the web root for my project, and where I point Apache to)

Obviously, as the project dictates, I will add other sub-directories. Also, when using SVN, {projectRoot} will typically be the 'trunk' of the repo.

So, how do you set up your development environment?

UPDATE: Someone asked in the comments for a way to restart Apache from inside Eclipse, well, thanx to Ant, that is very easy. I attached an Ant file to this entry, you can get it from the 'Download' link below. Drop this in your {apache root}/conf folder and when you want to restart Apache in Eclipse, right-click the file and choose 'Run As.. --> Ant Build' . You may need to change the name of the service. DISCLAIMER: This is offered as is and I make no warranties. Offer void where prohibited.

easyMVC - A Lightweight Flex Framework

Wed, 12 Dec 2007 22:25:00 -0400

Not too long ago, I started working on a Flex project. The application is not huge, but bigger than anything I have worked on to date. One thing I wanted to do was find a Flex framework to use for the project. I had looked at Cairngorm, Model-Glue: Flex and some others.

During my research, My good friend Jared clued me into a lightweight Flex framework, easyMVC, that Simeon Bateman was working on. It was nothing formal at the time, but Simeon had been using it on some projects. I asked Simeon if he would be willing to share the framework, and he graciously did so.

I was, and continue to be, amazed at how easy it is to use, and more importantly, how lightweight it is (I think its only 8 classes). It gets out of its own way, there is no perception of creating multiple files that do the same thing, there is no configuration file, it just works, and works well. It was easy to get up to speed using it. I decided to use the framework for my project.

After using the framework for a bit, I realized that the more I used it, the more I liked it. The more complex the application became, the easier it was to use the framework, and, the more I liked it. In late November/early December, Simeon had mentioned to me that he was going to release the framework publicly and earlier this month made the announcement.

I am very happy Simeon has released the framework publicly as it means there will most likely be support for it in the future. To date, I have not run into any issues where the framework did not allow for something I needed to do. I am not saying its perfect, just that I have not yet hit its limitations.

Just so everyone understands, I am referring to this easyMVC, not this EasyMVC. Unfortunately, the EasyMVC by Tom Bray was not one that appeared on my radar when I was researching frameworks, but it has been added to my list of stuff I need to check out.

Ping Me!

Wed, 17 Oct 2007 19:19:00 -0400

Following on the heels of Ray's, announcement, 'ping' is also now available for All Your Flex Are Belong To Us.

To ping AYFABTU, all you need to do is set up your blogging software to ping :

http://www.allyourflexarebelongtous.com/ping.cfm?BURL={your blog URL}

Where {your blog URL} matches exactly as it is stored in the DB. To find out the exact URL we are using, simply look up your blog on the Feeds Page.

AYFABTU Update

Mon, 15 Oct 2007 15:29:00 -0400

It seems that some people have been taken aback by the length of the domain name, AllYouFlexAreBelongToUs.com, for the new Flex blog aggregator. Well, thanks to Scott Pinkston, fear no more, you can now access ATFABTU by using flexbloggers.com as well.

Thanks, Scott!

New Flex Aggregator

Sun, 14 Oct 2007 12:10:00 -0400

I would like to announce that I am throwing my hat into the aggregator ring by launching All Your Flex Are Belong To Us. This aggregator uses the same code base used in ColdFusion Bloggers and will, for now, aggregate blogs which discuss Flex (It's possible I may add blogs which discuss AIR as well). The code was used with the permission and blessing of Ray Camden.

I would like to thank Ray and Dan Wilson for helping me come up with the name. I know its a bit long, but I think it is easy to remember.

Doing 'screenshots' in Flex and sending them to ColdFusion

Mon, 17 Sep 2007 11:29:00 -0400

This weekend I was doing some research about capturing 'screen shots' of a Flex application, or even specific UI components, and passing the 'image' back to the server for processing.

While there are a few ways to do this, I am going to discuss the 'easiest'. Using the JPGEncoder class packaged as part of the AS3 CoreLib on Google Code. Using this class to encode the data on the client side means that very little needs to be done server side to save the data as an image.

Its fairly easy to use this encoder to create binary data and pass it to CF. I have set up an example here. If you enter some text into the text area inside the panel and click 'Send Image', Flex will create a JPG of the panel and send it off to CF.

Here is a look at some of the code, you can also view the source from the Flex application.

First, I import the JPGEncoder class. I store a lot of AS libraries and components in one location and add them to the 'source path' of my application.

[code]import com.adobe.images.JPGEncoder;[/code]

Next, I create a method that converts a UI component into BitmapData.

[code]private function getBitmapData(target:UIComponent ) : BitmapData
        {
            var bitmapData:BitmapData = new BitmapData(target.width, target.height);
            var matrix:Matrix = new Matrix();
            bitmapData.draw(target, matrix);
            return bitmapData;
        }[/code]

As you can see, this method can take any UI element as an argument. This method returns the bitmap data of the UI element that was passed in.

Next, I create a method that handles calling the above method, and then sends the result to ColdFusion:

[code]private function sendImage(target:UIComponent):void{
            var bitmapData:BitmapData = getBitmapData(target);
            var jpgEncoder:JPGEncoder = new JPGEncoder(90);
            var imgData:ByteArray = jpgEncoder.encode(bitmapData);
            imageService.saveImage(imgData);
        }[/code]

This method also takes any UI element and uses it when calling getBitmapData(). It also creates an instance of the JPGEncoder class. The '90' that is passed into the constructor of JPGEncoder is the 'quality' of the resulting JPG.

Next we need to create a<mx:remoteObject> to talk to ColdFusion.

[code]<mx:RemoteObject id="imageService" showBusyCursor="true" destination="ColdFusion" source="path.to.cfc">
<mx:method name="saveImage" result="onResult(event)" />
</mx:RemoteObject>[/code]

The CFC itself is very simple, it contains 1 method whose only argument is the binary data that is our image.

[code]<cfcomponent name="Image Service" displayname="Image Service" output="false">
    <cffunction name="saveImage" access="remote" output="false" returntype="any">
       <cfargument name="data" type="binary" required="true" />
       <cffile action="write" file="c:\Temp\flex_image.jpg" output="#arguments.data#"/>
    </cffunction>
</cfcomponent>[/code]

You will see that inside the method all we do is a <cffile> to write the data to a file.

Lastly, we need some code that will fire off this entire event inside our Flex application.

[code]<mx:Panel layout="absolute" id="panel" title="My Title" width="400" height="400">
        <mx:TextArea left="5" top="5" bottom="5" right="5"/>
    </mx:Panel>
    <mx:Text text="Enter some text in the text area above and click 'Send Image'" />
    <mx:Button label="Send Image" click="sendImage(panel)" />[/code]

In my online example I have other code that will open a new browser window and show you the image you just captured. You can view the source by right-clicking the application and slecting 'View Source'.

Using this technique, you can do a screen shot of your entire application, or just individual UI components.

I Have Pownce Invites

Fri, 27 Jul 2007 01:10:00 -0400

I have 7. If your interested, leave a comment, the first 7 (if I even get 7 responses) will get one.