I'm working on a small team of around 10 developers, all using Rhapsody. We've recently noticed source artifacts in some of our classes, which aren't visible in the browser by default. They usually only change the ordering in generated sources, but some override changes to the model. In some cases we've lost time debugging new changes that didn't seem to work, only to discover the changes were being replaced by an implementation in the source artifacts.
Is there a way to disable or avoid generating source artifacts in Rhapsody?
I've seen them generated when saving with the active code view focused, but there may be other ways our team is inadvertently creating them. I checked SO to see if anyone else had a similar issue, and IBM's documentation didn't mention anything about disabling them or what actions implicitly create them. We're using Rhapsody 8.1.2.
The Source Artifacts in Rhapsody are created to preserve data from the code which is not mapped to UML model element. Such as ordering as you have mentioned, and more.
In case that you do all your changes from model, and not from code, you can disable the update of the model from code. In the Code menu, select Dynamic Model Code Associativity and then Code Generation. So Roundtrip will not run and update your model with changes from the code. Unless you run it manually from menu.
In case that you do want to update the model with changes from code, but less then the default. You can change the Roundtrip scheme from Respect to Advanced. This will allow you to add/change code elements in the code, but not to; change order, add global comments or pre-processor directives.
There is also Basic scheme which allow you to only modify functions body.
See the property [C/Cpp]_Roundtrip::General::RoundtripScheme
We need to customize for example the standard mail invitation template by changing the text a bit. I know this can be done by editing the freemarker template for the invitation that is stored in the data dictionary. This is however not optimal when it comes to application packaging. Is it somehow possible to extend the templates in the manner that they could be put on the extension classpath like the regular extension mechanism?
edit:
Found out that the inviation template for emails are hardcoded in the InviteSender java-class. :(
So I guess we will have to extend that class (and a lot of others) to do this.
Another solution I can think of would be to write a patch that replaces the ftl-files in the data dictionary with our edited ones at install time. Any other ideas?
It has been done and has been written in this blog.
In short No there is no out of the box solution for it.
Yes you could bootstrap your files and Patch Alfresco's (that's the most common used way).
You should also consider the fact that changing a template without to have access to the server where Alfresco is installed is a nice feature. With this functional guys who manage/operate/use Alfresco can change templates to their needs.
I have been asked to support a legacy app and I can't get access to the code behind files. I need to add a new feature that gets a list of items from the database on page_load, what way would adding an "in-page" page_load affect the compiled page_load?
What would be the best approach to take with this?
Since you mentioned that the legacy app has a Page_Load I assume it's .NET. This means that you should be able to decompile it using Reflector from Redgate to get the original source.
The source will likely be much less "pretty" than it was originally, but you should be able to get editable, compilable source out of it.
As for the question of an in-page page load and a compiled page load - You can try it... But I doubt it will work. You're really better off trying to get the source if you can.
Just wanted to ask about what to do when using as includes (ie <fx:Script source="includes/my_as3_file.as" />.
The problem is that in all of my files I'm using class-only modifiers, such as private, public protected, and FB sometimes protests regarding these. A friend told me that what he does is changing the file extension to .ias, but in this way, he loses code highlighting, content-assist and enabling breakpoints.
Thanks.
I like to use something called a ViewHelper (posted a link)
http://www.kensodev.com/2010/08/19/keep-your-mxml-files-neat-with-view-helpers/
This way, the MXML file is pure MXML at all times, and the view helper is coupled and has a reference to the view meaning you can do something like this in your view helper
myView.dataGrid.visible = false;
And of course many more things.
Even when I use RobotLegs's mediators, I still use the view helper for all actions that concern the view such as animations, hiding and shoeing things, state changing and more. I use the mediators only to mediate with the RobotLegs framework (re-dispatch events) and listen to the eventDispatcher.
Personally, I'm not a fan of using includes. As you've mentioned, it tends to obfuscate what's actually going on within a view, and makes it difficult to quickly scan a file and grok it's behaviour.
One of the best practices I've always followed is to reduce the amount of code within an <fx: Script /> block to almost none.
If you are using an include file, this suggests that your views are very script-heavy, which can lead to poor code reuse, and difficulty in writing testable code.
Instead, consider using the Presentation Model pattern where the logic is moved out to a separate class. Alternatively, there's also the Mediator pattern, however personally I've found this leads to more heavily coupled code - though that's likely down to my crappy execution, than a failing of the pattern.
Use code behind!
or
[mxml_file]AS.as for Actionscript file name.
ex MXML: MyView.mxml and the as file MyViewAS.as
then it will look like <fx:Script source="MyViewAS.as" />
Renaming the .as file to .ias, in my opinion, is one of the worst solutions one can come up with ( it's just horrible ). I also kinda disagree with Marty, because in Flex 4, the architecture is different from Flex 3 ( although Spark is built on top of MX - if we were talking about Flex 3, then I'd agree with what Marty said ). In Flex 4, the Skin is now considered to be the "View" and class making use of the view is the "Controller"... meaning that things are now much better separated than they were in Flex 3, where a components kinda played the role of both the View and Controller ( http://www.slideshare.net/saurabhnarula/flex-4-skinning-2634949 ).
Coming back to the original problem: It's true that Flash Builder is not perfect, but if you know that you don't have any errors in your code and it keeps on throwing some weird stuff at you, then simply try closing it and starting it again ( Clean your project afterward ). Whenever I set an .as file as the source for my MXML component, I like to have the file next to the MXML class ( ex: MyMXMLComponent.mxml and MyMXMLComponentAS.as, both being at the same level - source="MyMXMLComponentAS.AS" ). This 99% of the time works fine, but really rarely, I might have also received some weird errors from Flash Builder ( which usually got solved by closing it and cleaning the project afterward - on a couple of occasions, there was actually an error in my code which seemed to totally confuse/crash the compiler and make it throw some really senseless error messages, so definitely try to make sure that your code is correct ).
Personally, I'd suggest that instead of using .as files, you try to use the "code behind" approach ( search on Google / Adobe for more info on this - I wanted to post a link, but since I'm a new user, I'm limited to 1 link / post... hah ). Using code behind, you will surely never run into the problems you might run into with .as file and you will surely never have problems with code hinting. In case you have never used code behind before, then it might feel "strange" at the beginning, but you'll get used to it and you'll surely not want to write code "the old way" ever again.
I'm trying to write an application where parameters have to be passed to the application. In Flex builder I modified the and tags in the index.template.html, but when debugging I still don't see the variables passed (using from as3 the Application.application.parameters object)...
after reading a post i found that I had made a stupid mistake. I had added the
"flashvars", "var1=blah&var2=blah..." to the first
AC_FL_RunContent() which installs the Flash Player. My bad. As soon
as I modified the index.template.html to add the "flashVars" to the
2nd AC_FL_RunContent(), it worked like a charm.