Many tutorials suggest that you set up the Zend AMF server directly in the bootstrap or index.php file. But what if you want to build a hybrid application with both Flex and HTML interfaces? In this case it’s better to let the bootstrap file do its usual job of application dispatching, and to make the AMF gateway a controller.
Archive for the ‘Flash’ Category
Utilizing the Zend AMF Server Inside a Zend Controller
Sunday, December 14th, 2008What’s in the Zend Framework for the Flash/Flex Developer?
Wednesday, November 26th, 2008The 1.7 release of the Zend Framework includes the new Zend_Amf package which provides a gateway server implementation for AMF remoting. By the time of writing this article, there are not many resources available yet (a good starting point is here), and the few tutorials mostly guide you through the process of setting up the bootstrap file and establishing a MySQL database connection by using mysql_connect() directly in the service classes.
When a Cross-Domain Policy File is not Enough
Friday, August 15th, 2008This post is a reminder to myself (and a source of help to anyone who may need it). For a long time I thought a cross-domain policy file in a web server’s root directory solves all cross-domain security issues automagically – until I stumbled over the fact that I wasn’t able to manipulate the bitmap data of an image that was loaded from outside my SWF file’s domain.
Handling FlashVars in PureMVC
Wednesday, August 13th, 2008In this blog entry I would like to share my approach to handling FlashVars in a PureMVC application. I assume that you are familiar with the basic concepts of PureMVC.
1, true, yes, y, on? – A Boolean Converter in AS3
Wednesday, June 4th, 2008Configuration files often contain Boolean parameters for enabling or disabling features in an application or website. This way non-programmers can easily customize complex systems. But what if someone uses another word than “true” (for example, “1″, “yes”, “y”, “on”)?
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Getting Started with the PureMVC Startup Manager – Introduction
Monday, May 19th, 2008This three-parts tutorial reflects my own learning experience with the PureMVC framework and the PureMVC Startup Manager. It was inspired by Philip Sexton’s demo Startup as Ordered and is my first attempt on PureMVC. The tutorial’s goal is to provide beneficial information to other novice PureMVC users who have understood the theory but lack practice.
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Getting Started with the PureMVC Startup Manager – Part 3
Monday, May 19th, 2008Preparing the View
We are almost there. In the final step of this tutorial we will be creating a very simple view:
- Create a file with the name StageMediator.as in the view folder.
- Create a new folder inside the view folder and call it components.
- Create two files in the components folder and name them SectionView.as and TitleView.as.
Getting Started with the PureMVC Startup Manager – Part 2
Saturday, May 17th, 2008The StartupMonitorProxy
A PureMVC-based application typically has a startup command that instantiates some basic proxies and mediators. In our sample project we want to load a CSS stylesheet and an XML file with content before allowing any user interaction (see part 1). The important thing here is to make sure that everything gets loaded in the proper order and is fully loaded before it is accessed. Here is where the StartupMonitorProxy steps in. This class is at the core of the Startup Manager utility.
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Getting Started with the PureMVC Startup Manager – Part 1
Friday, May 16th, 2008Coming from a Flex/Cairngorm background, I’ve always missed a utility that takes care of the asynchronous loading of resources during application startup. Being too lazy to write one myself, I usually chain together several Cairngorm commands for loading configuration settings, stylesheets, language resources and initial data from a database. Each command is only executed if the predecessor task has been finished successfully. The user interface isn’t initialized until the whole chain is completed, otherwise an error message is generated and the application won’t start. It’s not elegant but it works.
When I started to learn PureMVC (and I’m still learning), I was happy to discover that the AS3 version is accompanied by a Startup Manager. This utility isn’t part of the core PureMVC framework and has to be downloaded and installed separately, but it nicely integrates with the “PureMVC way of things”.
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Quick Tip – Where are my Easing Equations?
Wednesday, May 14th, 2008Tutorials on TweenLite or TweenMax often rely on the easing functions that come with the Flash CS3 IDE. These functions are contained in the package fl.motion.easing. All classes under the package name fl are specific to Flash CS3 and are not available in the free Flex 3 SDK. If you, for example, use FlashDevelop with the Flex 3 SDK you have to import your easing functions from the package mx.effects.easing. So any time you see an import statement like this
import fl.motion.easing.*;
you should be able to replace it with
import mx.effects.easing.*;
and get the same functionality.