i'm trying to perform simple automated test on my Adobe Air Application. I decide to store some test data in external MS Excel file to decrease hardcode quantity. But I discovered, that this is not a trivial task, when you're working with Adobe Air.
Actually, i need to correct initialize an excelApp object, the rest part of logger is already implemented. I tried the following approach, but I can't find a package with ActiveXObject class defined.
excelApp = new ActiveXObject("Excel.Application");
Can you give some ideas, where can I find such a class?
There's a simple as3 xls reader library called as3xls that should provide the functionality you need. However, if you need to write out excel files, it's a little bit rough.
Related
I will be creating a structure more or less of the form:
type FileState struct {
LastModified int64
Hash string
Path string
}
I want to write these values to a file and read them in on subsequent calls. My initial plan is to read them into a map and lookup values (Hash and LastModified) using the key (Path). Is there a slick way of doing this in Go?
If not, what file format can you recommend? I have read about and experimented with with some key/value file stores in previous projects, but not using Go. Right now, my requirements are probably fairly simple so a big database server system would be overkill. I just want something I can write to and read from quickly, easily, and portably (Windows, Mac, Linux). Because I have to deploy on multiple platforms I am trying to keep my non-go dependencies to a minimum.
I've considered XML, CSV, JSON. I've briefly looked at the gob package in Go and noticed a BSON package on the Go package dashboard, but I'm not sure if those apply.
My primary goal here is to get up and running quickly, which means the least amount of code I need to write along with ease of deployment.
As long as your entiere data fits in memory, you should't have a problem. Using an in-memory map and writing snapshots to disk regularly (e.g. by using the gob package) is a good idea. The Practical Go Programming talk by Andrew Gerrand uses this technique.
If you need to access those files with different programs, using a popular encoding like json or csv is probably a good idea. If you just have to access those file from within Go, I would use the excellent gob package, which has a lot of nice features.
As soon as your data becomes bigger, it's not a good idea to always write the whole database to disk on every change. Also, your data might not fit into the RAM anymore. In that case, you might want to take a look at the leveldb key-value database package by Nigel Tao, another Go developer. It's currently under active development (but not yet usable), but it will also offer some advanced features like transactions and automatic compression. Also, the read/write throughput should be quite good because of the leveldb design.
There's an ordered, key-value persistence library for the go that I wrote called gkvlite -
https://github.com/steveyen/gkvlite
JSON is very simple but makes bigger files because of the repeated variable names. XML has no advantage. You should go with CSV, which is really simple too. Your program will make less than one page.
But it depends, in fact, upon your modifications. If you make a lot of modifications and must have them stored synchronously on disk, you may need something a little more complex that a single file. If your map is mainly read-only or if you can afford to dump it on file rarely (not every second) a single csv file along an in-memory map will keep things simple and efficient.
BTW, use the csv package of go to do this.
Is it possible to inject data, for example a collection of assets (video, images...), in an swf at compile time?
We have a flex application that needs to be able to export an swf at runtime that contains all the necessary data, because it needs to run as a standalone application (on- and offline).
The idea so far was to create a server side script that calls the flex compiler and feed it the data it needs. This approach seems to work fine using the [Embed] tag for single files, but it gets kind of messy when trying to inject collections of data that vary in length for each exported swf.
We could generate an mxml file with one embedded variable for each asset and include it at compile time, but that approach seems for from ideal.
We've looked into some actionscript bytecode libraries, but those do not seem to be fit for this.
Any suggestions or other approaches for this kind of problem?
Thx,
Bert
[Embed] is definitely the way to go. You can generate an AS file that has lots of embeds. While the generated code might be a bit ugly, you can generate a nicer api too. For example, if you want an array, generate code like this:
[Embed(...)]
private var img_0:Class;
[Embed(...)]
private var img_1:Class;
[Embed(...)]
private var img_2:Class;
public var images:Array = [img_0, img_1, img_2];
That way the only ugliness is in private variables only the code generator will see. The public variable is an array.
I'm not sure why you need to do that but i guess i'll try to generate the needed actionscript file from template or something like that and then call the flex compiler.
Hope this helps you...
try as3swfit is able to generate an swf file from an empty ByteArrayand afaik it's possible to insert embedded graphics there
Like Sam said, [Embed] could work, but what are you trying to load? My first reaction is that recompiling for every request would be a big drag on the server.
I need to parse a large trace file (up to 200-300 MB) in a Flex application. I started using JSON instead of XML hoping to avoid these problems, but it did not help much. When the file is bigger than 50MB, JSON decoder can't handle it (I am using the as3corelib).
I have doing some research and I found some options:
Try to split the file: I would really like to avoid this; I don't want to change the current format of the trace files and, in addition, it would be very uncomfortable to handle.
Use a database: I was thinking of writing the trace into a SQLite database and then reading from there, but that would force me to modify the program that creates the trace file.
From your experience, what do you think of these options? Are there better options?
The program that writes the trace file is in C++.
Using AMF will give you much smaller data sizes for transfer because it is a binary, not text format. That is the best option. But, you'll need some middleware to translate the C++ program's output into AMF data.
Check out James Ward's census application for more information about benchmarks when sharing data:
http://www.jamesward.com/census/
http://www.jamesward.com/2009/06/17/blazing-fast-data-transfer-in-flex/
Maybe you could parse the file into chunks, without splitting the file itself. That supposes some work on the as3 core lib Json parser, but it should be doable, I think.
I found this library which is a lot faster than the official one: https://github.com/mherkender/actionjson
I am using it now and works perfectly. It also has asynchronous decoder and encoder
I am new to Adobe Flex.
I want to write some data stored in a string variable into a text(txt) file.
Can some one add sample code here would be helpful for me.
Thanks.
You can write to files if you're targetting Flash 10. Read this article to find out how to do it: http://www.mikechambers.com/blog/2008/08/20/reading-and-writing-local-files-in-flash-player-10/
You cannot write to files in Flash, but you can if it's an AIR app. Review the File class in Adobe livedocs.
Since Flash Player 10 you can use the FileReference.save() method.
If you're creating web based apps, the file will have to be created on the server, and you should look for information in that using the technology of your choice. ColdFusion uses the cffile tag, as one example.
FileReference.save will give your user the ability to save a file, but you have limited control in naming or location.
If you're using AIR, you can save information to the local drive using the File class.
The last time I produced a catalog I used a software called EasyCatalog that worked with Adobe InDesign to merge data from a spreadsheet with graphics. I wouldn’t say it was completely successful. I know of one other catalog building software called Catalog Builder by Computer Pundits. I'm just looking for any suggestions from someone who might have gone through this process on what software I should use.
InDesign can create a really beautiful output from XML. Depending on the catalog content's complexity, you can either have a straightforward mapping of the elements in your catalog to the paragraph and character styles of the IDD file, or you may need to preprocess the XML with XSLT.
For example, if your data source can output the content as XML, but it doesn't map easily to InDesign tables, XSLT can be used to make the XML more "IDD-friendly" before you import it.
IDML is another way to handle XML content; instead of importing the XML content manually or with a script into your catalog template, you generate the IDML directly from your XML. (IDML files are a package of XML files that describe the page/spreads, fonts, swatches, text, images, etc. of the InDesign file.) You're probably going to need XSLT consulting help if this is not a skill you already have.
Take a look at the InDesign documentation for XML for the version you use. IDML is for CS4 or CS5.
Have a look at xCS.press by a company in Belgium. XML markup that is parsed to InDesign. Great for product catalogs.
I wouldn't use Catalog Builder by Computer Pundits again. I've used it in the past (mostly their website builder) and it is completely outdated in my opinion. Their templates are not easily customized and it was pretty slow for me. As for their website builder,(in case you're wondering) it's all tables and very little css IDs or Classes throughout the html.
I haven't used InDesign, but it seems there are lot of scripting features.
Easiest thing that comes to mind is creating an XML Schema with IDML to
get data from Excel into an InDesign document.
XML schema basically is a template for XML documents, and they're called XML Maps in Microsoft Office.
Am not familiar with catalog tools, try superuser.com as well for 3rd party tools & tips.
John. have you come across additional solutions since posting this? I wonder if you have considered CatBase or EM Software solutions.
InDesign works wonderfully with XML and XSLT. You can export the data from Windows Excel only to XML, but only when you create an XML-compatible worksheet. Don't save the file as an XML spreadsheet, that file is useless in InDesign.
What I do is either create a schema file (xsd) for the data that you want to use and import that into Excel on Windows (Mac version doesn't support XML) Once the schema is imported you can create an XML worksheet based on this schema and then copy and paste the data from the non-XML worksheet into the XML sheet. Once the data is in the spreadsheet you can export to an XML file and import it into InDesign.
As mentioned above you can map XML tags to Paragraph and character styles and create dynamic layout directly in InDesign or by using an XSLT to structure the data before you import it.
MS Access allows you to export directly to XML. If you move your data to InDesign you can save the time needed to build the XML spreadsheet. Image references have to be built properly before you export to XML or build an XSLT that will do it on the fly as you import the data in to your layout.
The entire process is described in detail in the book A Designer's Guide to Adobe InDesign and XML.
If the data is in MS Access Woodwing has a product that allows you to interface and import data for a catalog. I have not used it personally but I know people who have. Also, another product called In-Data also interfaces with InDesign, but I have no experience with that either. I usually just use XML and XSLT myself.
I've used EasyCatalog very successfully for a number of years now, even for really large catalogs (35,000+ articles). In the meantime, I offer EC consulting and hands-on user training as well.
I'd need many more details of what went wrong with your specific catalog in order to be able to point your attention to a different solution that may better fit your needs.
I personally would not recommend Jim Maivalds solution because a) Excel and Unicode are not friends b) working with Excel and XML really is a pain c) the process is relatively complicated d) you need a lot of specialized skills regarding XML, XSLT programming and so on e) it's not bi-directional f) when updating you'll do the whole process again.
With EasyCatalog, you just import your data into a panel and place them from there into your document, from manually up to fully automatically. It's really easy, and it's bi-directional - so you can update your document from the database at any time and - if you need to - your database from your document. By the way, you can import your data directly from Excel into an EasyCatalog panel as well.
However, EasyCatalog might not be the best solution if graphics are included in you spreadsheet as well - but who would ever include the real graphics in a spreadsheet instead of the name (and maybe path) to the actual graphic files?