Stretch Media - Adobe Flex RIA Blog

ColdFusion & Flex Hosting

Wed, 20 Jan 2010 13:06:00 -0500

If you knew me, you'd know that this post is about the last thing you'd expect coming from me. However, after recent experiences, I can't help but put a word out for GoWest Hosting. I've been focusing on a full-time job for the last 2 years now, and as a result, my consulting business has all but ceased to exist. I've maintained a dedicated server to maintain previous clients over this time, but financially, it just wasn't making sense any more. Therefore, I undertook the arduous task of transitioning clients off of it so I could get rid of it (and its expensive monthly cost) because I wasn't recouping the cost from hosting fees. I've put this off for 2 years because the thought of finding a compatible hosting company to support the ColdFusion and database services most of my projects required plain scared me. With all the remoting-config.xml and services-config.xml (not to mention data-management-config.xml with LCDS) to setup I figured it was going to take a very understanding hosting company to maintain these sites. I found just such a company in GoWest hosting. I have used other services in the past, and most recently an Adobe endorsed provider for the Austin Flex User Group site (I won't mention names, but it shouldn't be too hard to track down who they are). The service and support from this (and other, but especially this) company was absolutely pathetic. I've found that too often these days it's easy to just expect sub par services and support because it seems to be becoming the norm... and so you just deal with it and think 'hey, it could be worse i guess'. Seriously though... a lot of times customer support is literally becoming an afterthought (eg. Dell's troubles in the past few years, and their 180 reversal to try and gain back disgruntled customers). When I first contacted GoWest to ask them if they could support what I needed, not only did I get a quick response to the positive, but also an offer to setup a trial account and test it out before committing to a hosting plan. I took them up on this offer, and in fact their system did support what we needed, and was easy... really easy... to setup. It literally took me 10 minutes to ftp contents directly over, backup and restore the database, and fire up the site. Not one glitch in the process, and all done through their control panel interface. I immediately sent them an e-mail stating my joy over this. There was a bit more correspondence to come in setting up the ColdFusion services, and after a thread of about 30 emails back and forth we did get it working. Now, I'd like to step back and point out again, I hadn't given them a single dollar yet, and we could have potentially hit a roadblock in the setup which could have resulted in me saying 'thanks for your help, but I'm gonna have to look elsewhere'. This didn't happen and everything got transitioned over just fine. GoWest is now the new hosting provider for my clients, and I know they're in good hands given the service I received during the process. That's my pitch for the day... and hope that more Flex/CF developers read this and look to GoWest for their hosting... I know I will be in the future. http://www.gowesthosting.com

What happened to drag in 3.4?

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 12:38:00 -0500

The major app i've been working on for the past 2 years has been happily progressing through the iterations of the 3.x framework in Flex, until 3.4. All of a sudden my drag operations stopped functioning correctly. To be specific, any doDrag() operation has died and my eventListeners for MOUSE_MOVE don't seem to be getting dispatched when a component is dragging. I have deadlines, which means I've just moved back to 3.3 and won't have time to look into this right now.... as is usual... But has anyone else had this issue?

trace() output stops working with -optimize=true

Mon, 31 Aug 2009 21:39:00 -0500

I guess this one could be filed under the 'guess that makes sense' category, but none the less was a bit of a head-scratcher to figure out. Basically, I have a couple of external libraries which I'm using in my current Flex project. I was trying to use the global trace() function within these libraries, but there was nothing getting output. Wha? I was in debug mode... I have the debug player... this has worked before... wtf? Skip back... about a month ago my Subversion provider did a major migration which caused me massive headaches, and basically, I had to wipe out all my projects, and check them out fresh from the new svn repository locations, instead of just updating the repo address. In doing this, I thought I got all my settings correct, but alas... One particular Library project (the project in question above) had -optimize=true as compiler argument. I saw this and didn't figure it for the issue as you have the -debug argument, and -debug-verbose which deal with output stuff. Finally, after googling/flexcodering/blog searching/etc... along with confirming my mm.cfg file and flashlog.txt setup was correct, I began trying stuff willy-nilly to get this fixed. That's when I discovered that -optimize=true does indeed prevent any trace outputs. And that's the morale of this blog post :-)

Dynamic Datasources with Flex & LCDS

Sun, 10 May 2009 18:12:00 -0500

Here's some info from recent posts I made re: a feature I was trying to figure out using ColdFusion, Flex and LCDS... the ability to change the database being used by destinations for different client logins.

ORIGINAL POST:

I'm hitting a wall on a requirement for a Flex application which utilizes the LCDS version included with ColdFusion.

I have the project setup to use DAO's, Assemblers and ValueObject (cfc's) which I call from Flex via DataService implmentation and the fill(), getItem(), etc... methods.

I need to setup my ColdFusion layer to access multiple datasources from the same Flex application. However, because of the way LCDS gets called from Flex, it doesn't seem that Application or Session variables in ColdFusion persist when I set them. I was thinking I could just have the HTML (cfm) wrapper page for my Flex application set that, but it is not recognized when I go to make a fill or get call against the assembler.

I thought about passing the datasource as a parameter each time a call is made, but while that would work when I initiate fill and get methods, the sync methods are "invisible" and I wouldn't be able to append an argument to them.

So my issue is... how do I go about having ColdFusion read a dynamic variable to define it's datasource?

ANSWER:

Tom Jordahl provided the answer on this for me. Here's the solution:

1) Prior to implementing this solution, it's important to realize that because LCDS manages the data, switching datasources dynamically could potentially cause issues if there is overlap between identifiers on the records you are retrieving. In my case, I'm using GUID fields as primary key and identifiers in my destinations, so this is not a problem. However, for example, if you were to use an incrementing integer for the identifier, then you could feasibly have LCDS managing a record, which would match identifiers with a record if you switched datasources on the fly.

2) I'm using ColdFusion as my middle-tier layer, but this could be applied to any form by accessing the flex.messaging.FlexContext class within your solution of choice.

3) The solution involves extracting the ID value of Flex client which makes calls against your Destination. Grab the identifier by calling FlexContext.getFlexClient().getId() to get a unique key for the "session". I use the term "session" loosely, as it's really just representative of the particular swf instance which has been loaded with your Flex Application. However, the ID doesn't change and persists across all calls you make against your destinations.

4) On application load, make a call to your CF layer which gets the ID, and sets it to the Application scope of the CF server as follows:

<cffunction name="set" access="remote">
<cfargument name="datasource" type="string" required="yes" default="">
<cfset var clientID="">
<cfscript>
clientID = CreateObject('java', 'flex.messaging.FlexContext').getFlexClient().getId(); APPLICATION[clientID] = arguments.datasource;
</cfscript>
</cffunction>

The function above receives a unique string which I want to be my datasource of choice. You could call this "set" function again anytime to reset the Application variable for this "session".

5) The only other thing to do, is now access this Application variable for each datasource.

datasource="#APPLICATION[CreateObject('java', 'flex.messaging.FlexContext').getFlexClient().getId()]#"

6) The last consideration is that each connection that is made via Flex will be setting a new variable in the Application scope on the Coldfusion server. This is a pretty minor concern for me, and I'll just run a schedule to clear the Application scope once a day, but if you have a high volume of users, a better solution would have to be found.

Cool New Flex App

Mon, 01 Dec 2008 22:55:00 -0500

Check out this new cool new Flex app: Rombla. Rombla is an online "no programming" site builder that enables designers to create fully-editable websites using simple visual editing tools and then share them with their clients to edit and maintain. I was able to design and build a basic template in about 5 minutes and a full site in about 25. Some cool features but my favorite has to be the color scheme mixer where you can create your own palettes in Kuler then import them into Rombla. Then you can really experiment by changing layouts and navigation. You can literally change the entire look and feel of your site in seconds. It's addictive for a designer and super easy and fast for clients to do their own edits - great for people who don't like getting caught up with endless text edits. Check it out at: http://www.rombla.com/

Double click to edit DataGrid/List

Sat, 20 Sep 2008 16:10:00 -0500

After some brief searching on this topic I pulled up an entry from FlexCoders back in August of 2007 where Chris Huyler had figured out and put together a custom DataGrid to listen for a double click event rather than the default single click for itemEditor instances. I needed both DataGrid and List support using this feature, so using Chris' example for DG, I modified for List as well. All credit goes to Chris for figuring this out, and my thanks... here's an example of each below: DataGrid

package com.bm.custom_components

{

import flash.events.MouseEvent;

import flash.geom.Point;



import mx.controls.DataGrid;

import mx.controls.listClasses.IListItemRenderer;

import mx.events.DataGridEvent;



public class DoubleClickEditDataGrid extends DataGrid

{

public function DoubleClickEditDataGrid() {

	super();

}



private var triggeredEditable:Boolean = false;



public function triggerItemEditor(event:MouseEvent):void

{

	var r:IListItemRenderer = mouseEventToItemRenderer(event);

	var p:Point = itemRendererToIndices(r);

	if ( columns[p.x].editable != false )

	{

		if (!editable)

		{

			editable=true;

			triggeredEditable = true;

			addEventListener(DataGridEvent.ITEM_EDIT_END,
 triggeredEditorEnd);

		}

		var dEvent:DataGridEvent = new DataGridEvent(DataGridEvent.ITEM_EDIT_BEGINNING, 
false, 
false, 
p.x, 
null, 
p.y, 
null, 
r, 
p.y);

		dispatchEvent(dEvent);

	}

}



private function triggeredEditorEnd(event:DataGridEvent):void

{

	if ( triggeredEditable )

	{

		editable = false;

		triggeredEditable = false;

		removeEventListener( DataGridEvent.ITEM_EDIT_END, triggeredEditorEnd);

	}

}

}

}

List

package com.bm.custom_components

{

import flash.events.MouseEvent;

import flash.geom.Point;

	
import mx.controls.List;

import mx.controls.listClasses.IListItemRenderer;

import mx.events.ListEvent;

	
public class DoubleClickEnabledList extends List

{

	public function DoubleClickEnabledList(){}

		

	private var triggeredEditable:Boolean = false;



	public function triggerItemEditor(event:MouseEvent):void

	{

		var r:IListItemRenderer = mouseEventToItemRenderer(event);

		var p:Point = itemRendererToIndices(r);

		if (!editable)

		{

			editable=true;

			triggeredEditable = true;

			addEventListener(ListEvent.ITEM_EDIT_END, triggeredEditorEnd);

		}

		var dEvent:ListEvent = new ListEvent(ListEvent.ITEM_EDIT_BEGINNING,
false,
 false, 
-1, 
p.y, 
null, 
null);
		dispatchEvent(dEvent);

	}

		

	private function triggeredEditorEnd(event:ListEvent):void

	{

		if ( triggeredEditable )

		{

			editable = false;

			triggeredEditable = false;

			removeEventListener( ListEvent.ITEM_EDIT_END, triggeredEditorEnd);

		}

	}

}

}

Using external services-config.xml files and setting up on Mac

Sun, 14 Sep 2008 03:18:00 -0500

Problem: I want to reference a remote instance of the services-config.xml file for a project I'm working on. I'm now developing on the mac platform (which I love) and need to figure out how to reference it. Solution: 1) Connect to and "mount" the external drive on which the services-config.xml file resides. Connecting to the remote drive via Finder by choosing Go -> Connect to Server or Cmd+K will give you access to the networked drive, but doesn't help you when you need to reference that drive (mapping in Windows) within the compiler settings in FlexBuilder. So... Fire up Terminal and navigate to the root of your system, and then into your Volumes directory. Create a new directory here as follows:

mkdir [new_name]

Choose something relevant as the name as you'll be referencing it in a second. Next, use the following command to "mount" your remote network drive to this new drive you've just created.

mount_smbfs //[userame]:[password]@[remote_server_url]/[drive]/ /Volumes/[new_name]

Each of the vars used here is pretty straight forward, but make sure you use the same when you reference the "mounting" location in /Volumes You won't be returned with any confirmation of success, but if you don't get any error, then it's setup successfully. Now, go back into FlexBuilder, and setup your services pointer to:

-services '/Volumes/[new_name]/ColdFusion8/wwwroot/WEB-INF/flex/services-config.xml'

or whatever your path may be.

FlexMDI is ported to FlexLib

Wed, 27 Feb 2008 21:13:00 -0500

So after a lot of hard work on the part of Ben Clinkinbeard over the past few months, the FlexMDI project has been moved into the FlexLib project maintained by Doug McCune and others. As I mentioned, Ben's done a lot of shit to the project over the past few months (most of which I freely admit I don't know anything about and had nothing to do with :-) which he summarizes in his latest post release. I will say that I did have some border resizing functionality ready to add, but didn't quite make the deadline for this release. I'll be updating the FlexLib project with code in short order. So a big thanks to Ben for continuing to drive this project. He just presented on this in part of his presentation at 360Flex in Atlanta so hopefully there will be a lot more folks that check out this little framework we put together.

Virtual Mapping in ColdFusion 8

Tue, 26 Feb 2008 11:46:00 -0500

I was setting up the ColdFusion 8 server on my new Mac Pro today and am using the development server now in lieu of IIS which I always used on my Windows dev boxes previously. When setting up a virtual directory, I'd always just set it up through IIS. Setting up virtual directories in ColdFusion was a bit of a change for me, and after an hour of head scratching when my CF mapping didn't work when trying to call CFM files through browser, I figured out the following to setup a virtual directory for built-in ColdFusion development server: 1) Open up the jrun-web.xml file located in ColdFusion8/wwwroot/WEB-INF directory.
2) Add a virtual directory mapping as follows:

<virtual-mapping>

  <resource-path>/cf/*</resource-path>

    <system-path>/Users/meutznerb/Documents/dev_flex3/CFMiddleTier/</system-path>


</virtual-mapping>

3) Save the file, and restart the CF server instance. The mapping above will now allow me to call files from

http://localhost:8500/cf/

and reference the CFMiddleTier directory in my Documents/dev_flex3 directory. The trick was getting the directory path correct... starting from /Documents/... would not work, and required the full path with /Users/meutznerb/Documents/... to be defined. That's my mac newbie tip for the day :-)

A Persistent/Interactive Tooltip in Flex

Wed, 20 Feb 2008 12:12:00 -0500

I came across a requirement at work a few weeks back which involved an "interactive" tooltip... We needed to provide a summary of information in the tooltip, but then provide a link button to a more detailed document. I came up with the following example by creating some functionality around the DataGrid mouse movements to display a "tooltip" (in reality a Menu instance) at the mouse position. Rather than digging into the framework to try and extend the ToolTip class to make it "stick" when moused over, I realized we've got popup menu functionality like that already. Slap a custom menu item renderer in there, skin it, and you've got a mousable, interactive tooltip instance. I could have gone the extra mile and created a custom DataGrid instance using this new functionality, but I'm lazy so I'm just going to post the instance I implemented and let you figure out how to implement it for yourself :-) The idea being that it could be just as easily implemented on any List based control, and even with a bit of work any component in the Flex framework. Just modify the renderer to fit the content you need! Example Here Source Here

Copy from DataGrid to Clipboard/Excel in Flex

Wed, 20 Feb 2008 12:00:00 -0500

A really simple example today for a pretty useful feature... being able to copy contents from a datagrid (or any structure which uses a dataProvider for that matter) onto the system clipboard, and into an application like Excel. Excel is able to recognize an HTML table format and pastes the structure into appropriate cells. The following example is tailored to that type of structure, but can really be formatted to whatever needs you have by modifying the createHTML() (or more appropriately named) method. View example here : Example And source here : Source Code

Set "Loading" screen background color on Flex

Sat, 15 Dec 2007 20:33:00 -0500

If I had a nickel for every time I've looked at a Flex application these days and seen that dull, default greyish blue color... So here's my tip for the day: Check out the compiler arguments line in the Flex properties and add -default-background-color #PUTYOURCOLORHERE Easy to do, and then your Flex apps won't look like everyone else's anymore :-) More compiler arguments are available if you'd like to get frisky... http://livedocs.adobe.com/flex/201/html/wwhelp/wwhimpl/common/html/wwhelp.htm?context=LiveDocs_Book_Parts&file=compilers_123_24.html And better yet, check out Ted Patrick's blog on creating custom preloaders and be a real rock star. http://www.onflex.org/ted/2006/07/flex-2-preloaders-swf-png-gif-examples.php

Flex Prominent on Webware 2007 Hits & Misses

Wed, 12 Dec 2007 12:16:00 -0500

It was nice to see that Flex was right up there with Google in the "Hits" category for 2007 with AIR from Adobe as well as the online photo editing site Picnik. See Full List A good indication of great things to come in 2008!

riajobs.com & riacareers.com

Tue, 11 Dec 2007 00:34:00 -0500

So let me start off by saying I'm not really fond of domain name squatters, but unfortunately I've become one of them :-) I registered a couple of domain names back in 05 while doing contract work through recruiting agencies. It didn't take long for me to establish a sincere dislike for recruiters, and although I'm sure there are great ones out there, I feel the vast majority aren't qualified to do their jobs. But enough about that... I registered both riajobs.com and riacareers.com with the intention of creating a marketplace where developers could get in contact "directly" with employers... and vice versa... I noticed another site recently (www.nauglegroup.com) founded by Kevin Langdon and upon seeing it though "that's what I intended to do". However, given time and commitment constraints, it hasn't happened yet, and probably won't for quite a while. So that leaves me to ask the question, what/where/how can these be put to best use? I'd obviously love to sell them for a million bucks, but that's unlikely. I talked with John/Tom over at 360 Conferences about using them for their recent ideas on RIACommunity. Does anyone else have thoughts on this topic?

Disable single button in ToggleButtonBar

Wed, 21 Nov 2007 22:51:00 -0500

So after a short period of searching, there doesn't seem to be a straight-forward way to disable a single ToggleButtonBar button instance... here's what I found worked: UIComponent(tBBInstance.rawChildren.getChildAt(X)).enabled/disabled Anyone find a clearer way?