flexonrails.net

If you visit this site to use the Flex 2 Styles Creator to create and download CSS then you should definitely check out the new version of the Flex 2 Styles Explorer that Peter Baird from Adobe Consulting just released. It has many, many new features, including the ability to automatically copy all of the CSS that you create to your local clipboard.

Click here to check it out.

Keep up the good work Peter!

After reading this post on the Midnight Coders forum about a method for eliminating the need for mapping services in the remoting-config.xml file WebORB for PHP, and driven by my intense dislike of configuration, I thought I would see if the same thing is possible in WebORB for Rails. Turns out it is really easy.

Here is all you have to do:

1. add endpoint="/weborb" to your RemoteObject definition.

2. Make sure that the destination property on the RemoteObject matches the name of the service class that you want to call in Rails.

For example, if you had a service class in your Rails app called IssueService, here is what the RemoteObject would look like in Flex:

    <mx:RemoteObject id="issueService" destination="IssueService"
    		    endpoint="/weborb"
		    showBusyCursor="true"
		    result="event.token.resultHandler( event );"
		    fault="event.token.faultHandler( event );">
    </mx:RemoteObject>

That’s all you have to do. Now you don’t have to add any mappings to the remoting-config.xml file (note that you still need to keep the file because WebORB looks for it, you just don’t have to do anything with it), and you can get rid of the -services argument in your compiler options.

I’ve set up all of the services in one of my apps like this and everything seems to be working properly. Let me know if you encounter any issues with this, or if you have any questions.

Alex MacCaw has just posted a screenshot of Aireo, an application that he is developing that allows you to access Amazon’s S3 data storage using a Flex/Apollo front-end and a Rails back-end. Here is a brief description taken from Aireo’s website:

Aireo in a nutshell:

• Scalable: Aireo is built on Amazon’s S3 data storage service, allowing virtually unlimited storage space for very competitive prices.
• Safe: Files have the option of being encrypted to military grade standards.
• Accessible: You can access Aireo through WebDAV, FTP, a html interface and Apollo.
• Flexible: Aireo can be accessed from all major operating systems, such as Windows, Mac and Linux.
• Collaborative: Files can be quickly referenced and passed around a company as Aireo interfaces with your email system. Files can also be collaboratively edited. On top of this, Aireo allows file sharing with people outside the company if necessary.
• Mobile: Aireo allows you to disconnect and travel, syncing your changes when you next go online. You can also access Aireo through a wireless enabled PDA.

It’s nice to see that there is a lot of interest in developing Flex components, and the FlexComponents discussion list is a great start towards providing a single place to learn about the components that the Flex community is working on, but I would really like to see something like Ruby’s RubyGems package manager (or Perl’s CPAN) for distributing Flex components. Having a single centralized, standardized means of distributing Flex components would make it a lot easier for Flex developers to take advantage of the work that other Flex developers are doing. 

For example, if I came across a nice component, such as this spring loaded tree, it would be great if all I had to do to add it to my projects is crack open a command line and enter something like:

flexc install spring-tree

Better yet, it would be really nice to see this type of functionality integrated directly into Flex Builder 3.

Just a thought…