Programmatically close an AIR application - apache-flex

I would like to know the correct way to close an AIR application programmatically.
In my Spark WindowedApplication I have:
this.addEventListener( Event.CLOSING, shutdownApp );
and of course an implementation of the shutdownApp method (which basically tidies up temporary files).
This works fine for the top-right close button of the window. However I also have functionality which needs to shutdown the application. Within the code I have called:
NativeApplication.nativeApplication.exit();
However this doesn't trigger the Event.CLOSING method, and so my temporary files are not cleared up. Should I not be calling nativeApplication.exit ? If so, what should I call instead? I'd rather not have to call my shutdownApp method before the NativeApplication.exit() as this doesn't feel quite so elegant.
Can anyone shed any light on the correct way of doing this?
Thanks,
Phil

I know this question has been answered and accepted, but thought I'd share, I use.
stage.nativeWindow.close();

The documentation looks a bit ambiguous on this and I would have the same interpretation that you did. Did you try the close or exit methods on the WindowedApplication?
Something like this, with FlexGlobals and topLevelApplication:
(FlexGlobals.topLevelApplication as WindowedApplication).close();
or
(FlexGlobals.topLevelApplication as WindowedApplication).exit();

Just give an answer here because I searched for a related question and was not able to find sth.
I wanted to do something similar and close an AIR application when the native close button of the document window (spark.components.Window) is pressed thought that the spark WindowedApplication container (the applications main window) is still active to hold and manage the native menu (at application startup it is also used to display a splash screen. It has to stay open since if it is closed the native menu won't show up or be accessible anymore so its visible property is just set to false).
My main problem was the window closing event. Registering it with ActionScript like
this.addEventListener(Event.Closing, windowClosed);
does not work: No closing event was dispatched.
The only way was to register an event handler directly in the s:Window element at start of the MXML file. I just throw in the closing attribute:
closing="window1_closingHandler(event)"
The event was dispatched then and in window1_closingHandler-function I called
NativeApplication.nativeApplication.exit();
That works for me and shuts down the whole application.

Related

Opening and closing windows using Titanium Alloy

I know how to open windows in Alloy, but I am worried about the effect on performance of opening lots of windows. In Classic titanium, you had to manage this carefully to avoid memory leaks, but i've seen very little on this for Alloy. Is this handled somehow by Alloy behind the scenes - can I just keep opening windows to my heart's content?
So if I have index.js opening category.js, which then opens product.js, but there is a button to open index.js - how do I handle that?
Try this: https://developer.appcelerator.com/question/176491/alloy-close-the-window-clear-the-memory
Simply closing the window does not free up any memory that has
references open from within the menu or any child views/function of
the window. It is common to create a cleanup method and publicly
expose this from the controller. You then make sure that anything you
created or referenced inside this controller has been nulled, removed
or reset - within this function. Add an event listener to the window
inside the controller to handle the close event and then have it call
the clean-up function. Finally removing that event listener as well.
Some things to check for in your clean-up function Event Listener -
use Remove Event Listener once they are nbo longer required For tables
simply use table.setData([]); nothing more complicated than that If
you use setTimeout or setInterval you must always clear(thing) each of
these There are more but these are the highlights.

FlexMonkey Issue with TitleWindow Popups

We are currently testing parts of our application that open in popup windows. These windows are subclasses of TitleWindow. The issue we now run into is that the popups seems to be registered multiple times and that tests are sometimes executed on popups that have already been closed (or so it seems).
I thought this had to do with the way we closed and removed our popups, but I can't really spot any problems there. After looking into the FlexMonkey source code, I saw that there is an explicit check for "TitleWindow" in the ADDED_TO_STAGE handler, after which the popup is added as an application window. But the popup never seems to be removed from the "_windows" collection. As a result, when you open the tree view in FlexMonkey, there are several instances of the same popup window class. This probably also explains why our tests sometimes do not seem to run (visually), but execute and verify correctly, as they are ran on a hidden instance of a popup. I would expect the MonkeyAutomationManager to also listen to REMOVED_FROM_STAGE events and remove the popup when it is closed.
Am I missing something here or is this an (known) issue?
My guess is that it isn't an issue, it's simply that your code isn't properly cleaning the object and removing it from the display list. You also need to remember that garbage collection does not run right after you remove something from the stage. It could be possible that your window, even if it has been removed from the stage is in fact still listening and responding to events.

Flex Cairngorm 3 Presentation Model Initializations

ok so I have a TitleWindow that I open up... and I have 6 states defined. I am using the Presentation model pattern for all of my views. I have discovered a frustrating nuance. When I tell my window to go to XXX state, the controls have to initialize since the states in flex use lazy loading. so... my PM code that says myTextArea.text bombs out and say "cannot access..." so as a work around, I made some creationComplete events on my controls to register the control with the PM. So when the state changes, the textarea finally initializes and on creationComplete calls PM.registerTextArea() which sets a reference to it. then in that function I run my code... myTextArea.text.. etc.
This seems like such a ugly hack that I hate it. Is there any way to wait until the entire state in created then call code on the PM? I have tried enterstate... but this event seems to fire before the state controls are ready.
I tried to add a comment, but I guess editing is the only way I can do this...
to everyone: thanks for the great feedback. I am doing something slightly off straight PM. Every view has a viewController (as I call them). Its kinda my own hybrid of a delegate / dataprovider. But this is moot. It's the flex component lifecycle when dealing with states that is the pain. if you change state.. there is no event to say "all my components in this state are ready". only event to say "we changed state". so my code that fires on state change is trying to talk to components that aren't ready yet. So from what I see, there seems to be no design pattern or perfect way to ensure that all components are created in a state unless using creationComplete on every component in the state to register it is ready... if you don't, you get a race condition. Regardless of frameworks or design patterns, this seems to be a root issue.
The textarea is an easy PM fix.. just bind it to the pm value. But there are other times I can't.
Specifically, I am trying to attach video to a display once I get to that state. This is done via addchild. regardless of where I do it.. I need to know that the videoDisplay is done loading before I call addchild. I even tried currentStateChange event since docs say that fires last... but alas.. the components in the state are still initializing. So it seems that creationComplete is my only option. Maybe the only sane way to keep to clean code is to create the entire thing (videodisplay and video) using as once the state is entered. I just hoped the flex framework had events to ehlp me here rather than buiilding everything on the fly in as.
Since your PM has a reference to a visual component (myTextArea), this isn't a completely pure form of a presentation model. It appears to be more of a supervising presenter / controller type of setup.
That being said, the way I would fix your problem would be to use a complete presenter outright ( no knowlege of the view at all ) or use a complete controller ( view implements an interface through which the controller communicates ). The advantage of using a presenter in Flex is that you can create a bindable value such as text or selectedItem, and the view will bind to that variable whenever it comes online so the issues dealing with the lifecycle of Flex components go away.

Adobe flex layout redraw

this is a very basic question but I could not figure out.
My flex application gets some parameters from URL when the application opens for the first time(ex: layout=<1,2,3,4> ). Based on layout(1,2,3,4) value I have to change the layout. However the problem is the application is already drawn(Layout is initialized) by the time the control reaches the point where it reads the values from the URL.
I was wondering how can I redraw once I read the values from URL. Some thing like refresh.
Or is there a better approach to my problem.
thank you
I am not sure if this is the right approach but I fixed my problem my calling the function which is responsible for layout in applicationComplete.
It works great now.
The better approach would be to wait for the URL to be parsed and then create your view based on that value.
This means that your Main.mxml should be empty when the application loads and when you parse the URL add your MainView to the application.
Something like
- CreationComplete
- ParseURL
- AddMainViewElement
According to the adobe documentation:
"After all components are created and drawn, the Application object dispatches an applicationComplete event. This is the last event dispatched during an application startup."
( http://help.adobe.com/en_US/flex/using/WS2db454920e96a9e51e63e3d11c0bf69084-7ee6.html)
so "applicationComplete" event fired after all the components created.

Flex 3 - Force all controls to render at start

When I try to access the hidden TABs of my tab navigator control in action script, it returns a null error. But it works OK if I just activate the control in the user interface once. Obviously the control is not created until I use it. How do I make all the tabs automatically created by default ?
<mx:TabNavigator creationPolicy="all"/>
That should do it. Deferred instanciation is a feature, but sometimes it is a hassle.
The Flex framework is optimizing creation be default (creationPolicy="auto") so if you have a configuration dialog with a lot of tabs, for example, and the most useful tab is the first one, your application does not spend time and memory initializing the tabs that the user never sees.
This makes a lot of difference when dialogs like this never release, and is a good default to go with.
One thing to look at is using a private variable in your dialog/form instead of pushing the data to the control on the hidden page. This style treats the whole form as if it were a component, which it sort of is. To repeat: the MXML form/dialog/canvas is a class, and it can have data and methods in addition to containing other components.
Cheers
On a side note, I've run into the deferred-loading policy in a multi-state application, and circumvented it by forcing all elements to be included and invisible in the initial state. Something to consider, but only as a hack.

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