I am a AS3 novice learning PureMVC and want to write code following best practices so that any other AS3 developer can pick up my code and easily understand what I did, I am tempted to do stuff as I would in JavaScript or Asp.Net/C#, but I have a feeling that might not be the best approach.
Thoughts? Links?
Using reverse domain folder structure is common from the Flex code I have seen. ie:
com/mydomain/myproject/view ... model, business, controller (this would make it easy for me to understand your code)
More: http://blog.tsclausing.com/post/11
ASDoc is a tool that creates very pretty HTML documentation from code comments automatically:
http://livedocs.adobe.com/flex/201/html/wwhelp/wwhimpl/common/html/wwhelp.htm?context=LiveDocs_Book_Parts&file=asdoc_127_1.html
You may be beyond this point but I have used Cairngorm (MVC) and it was well documented:
http://opensource.adobe.com/wiki/display/cairngorm/Cairngorm
Code Example
This is the Cairngorm store which is the standard Cairngorm example:
http://cairngormdocs.org/blog/?p=17
I found that reading through the docs helped me get a clear definition of each of the parts to PureMVC. On top of that I downloaded the source for the demos and added them in Flex Builder so I could look through them easily and see how they were constructed to get an idea of how I should construct my project.
One thing you have to remember is that you can do things any way you want, but to make using the framework worthwhile you should stick to the structure and way of doing things that it suggests. For example you could give your view a reference to the facade and have it get information from Proxies etc. But you should keep the view decoupled from the framework and just have it dispatch events and have a Mediator deal with the facade.
Related
We're converting from ColdFusion to ASP.NET 4.0 and we just don't know which route to take with setting up our classes.
In college I was taught to break everything up into separate Data Access Classes and Entity Classes that speak to the DAC. To me, that's the best option for a team that needs a lot of control over their classes and needs to reuse multiple items.
Then there is LINQ... Sure.. It's great and fast! I have no problems writing my own queries though. To me, it's not something I really need. None of us on the team need the help from LINQ actually.
I would think we should be using folders that contain our DAClasses and folders that contain our Entity Classes. Then we would have our actual .aspx presentation pages.
Any ideas on which route we should be taking?
If you're going to go through the pain of moving from an existing platform to a new one anyway, look at ASP.NET MVC.
The Model-View-Controller methodology is a potentially cleaner way of thinking about web development, and it achieves the separation of concerns your team seems worried about.
On a different note, you make it sound like LINQ and other such technologies are crutches. They are not unless you use them that way (as in, not being able to do data access without it). They are there as a tool to make your life as a developer easier and development go faster.
Knowing how it works is great, if you didn't know I would be of the mindset that you shouldn't use it. But you clearly state that you do understand it, so why not leverage it?
I'm scratching my head on how to accomplish the following task: I need to write a simple web forms filler/submitter with QT C++, it does the following:
1) Loads page url
2) Fills in form fields
3) Submits the form
Sounds easy, but I'm a web developer and can't find the way how to make QT accomplish the task, I only managed to load url with QWebView object using WebKit, have no idea what to do next, how to fill in fields and submit forms. Any hints, tutorials, videos? I appreciate this.
QWebElement class does all the work, just reading through the class documentation gave me a full idea on how to accomplish my task. Thanks to eveyrone for suggestions.
The best solution would be to write the logic in JavaScript that does what you want and then inject it into the page using QWebFrame::evaluateJavaScript() after it finishes loading.
There's also another way to do this; involving the document tree traversal API that's been available in QtWebKit since 4.6: QWebElement. You'd basically process the form pretty much the same as you would do in JavaScript, except that here the API is different and more limited. It's C++ though and might be a little bit faster. I guess, this approach might be less attractive for you, given you're a web developer and probably already know JavaScript.
What is the best practice in terms of communication (variable usage ann method calls) between custom components developed using mxml.
You could use Flash's built-in Event mechanism, which has no external dependencies.
http://livedocs.adobe.com/flex/3/html/help.html?content=events_01.html
You might want to implement one of the frameworks mentioned here: Flex MVC Frameworks. A proper architecture will allow you to communicate between components more easily. I use pureMVC in my current project.
Cheers.
PureMVC is pretty solid. It take a bit to get familiar with the design philosophy. But once you are set up it is pretty easy to code against and makes your project easy to grow and extend with solid MVC design principles.
The main thing about PureMVC is its concept is a concept of Notifications. You can pass around various objects in a simplified way throughout the system.
For an overview of PureMVC checkout
http://puremvc.tv
http://puremvc.org/
If you would like some more specific code examples or have specific questions let me know.
Has anyone had any luck testing a Flex app without static Automation IDs attached to components? All of the elements in the apps are generated .....
We've investigated FlexMonkey but it appears to be incompatible with any app that utilizes the ExternalInterface. RIATest's scripting language leaves much to be desired...
Thanks-
Jonathan
Unfortunately I don't know much about this kind of stuff, but I went to a talk that presented these tools for TDD:
- Hudson
- Flex Unit 4
I guess there are tutorials online, don't know if it helps with ExternalInterface testing.
Is there anything that prevents you from generating appropriate automationNames for your generated components? This way you should be able to refer to them properly in automation tools.
Are there any other non-changing properties that your generated components have, like maybe 'id'? If so you can use these properties to address the components. This is definitely possible in RIATest.
FunFX is a Flex automation tool that allows you to access components via ID, "automation name", "automation value" or index. While using something like the component index might be less than ideal for robust tests, if that's all that's stable, it might be worth a try. And it's written in Ruby, so that should satisfy any "real programming language" related requirements. :)
We added an "automationPrefix" property to many of our custom controls (particularly those that are reused many times on a single screen), and wrote code to append the beginning of the automationName property on any child controls. Setting the automationName was the most important parting of enabling automation testing on our Flex apps. There are several ways you could modify the automationName to be unique without making it completely static at the level that most test automation packages need it. We are currently using QTP as the test automation tool of choice.
From what I understand a framework reduces complexity in areas that are common, like a log-in system. I use ASP.NET MVC at work and have done some work in Zend Framework but do not get how a framework helps with client side development. The reason ASP.NET MVC is used at work is for Unit Testing - does a Flex framework help with this too?
Please let me know why I should or should not use a framework with Flex?
The short answer is: it depends on the framework. :) My thoughts below:
Flex is itself a framework, and you can write reasonable applications without the need for any additional framework. Flash has a built-in event model that allows for bubbling events, so you can dispatch an event in a deeply-nested user interface component and have a listener higher up in the hierarchy that handles the event. The event handler can delegate to your model, which retrieves data from the server, and Flex's binding support can ensure that your views are appropriately updated from the model. I think it's important to understand that Flex applications can and should be written more or less according to that approach, and that any additional framework should help facilitate that approach, rather than providing its own way of doing things that ends up coupling you to the framework.
That being said, an extra framework that helps facilitate this approach can absolutely provide value. I would recommend Mate or Swiz because I think they achieve this goal. They don't try to reinvent the wheel or replace parts of the Flash / Flex APIs; instead they complement them. The dependency injection features make it much easier to provide data to your views, but without coupling them to any framework. There are a number of utilities available to make it easier to work with remote services. They also have a utils to facilitate testing or even persisting data in shared objects.
I have also worked with Cairngorm in the past and I would not recommend it. CG is notorious for requiring you to create a ton of classes that adhere to CG-specific APIs and requiring you to use many of their Singleton implementations which make your app brittle and hard to test in isolation. It is based on a number of J2EE patterns which fell out of favor in the Java community at least 5 years ago.
I've read a little about PureMVC and while I can't speak to its invasive nature, I think that reinventing the event model (called "notifications") is silly and couples you to their framework. Sure, you can say it "insulates" you from the Flash event model in case it changes, but I'd say the odds of PureMVC changing their notification model is far more likely than Adobe changing the event model. :)
If you've ever tried building a slightly large application, or one at all complex, things can quickly get out of control. I don't know how many projects I bailed on when I was first starting out because I didn't know patterns, or how to make parts of the system communicate without being tied to each other, or dependent on each other.
So, basically a framework is a collection of patterns put together. Theoretically, if you learn to follow the "rules" of a (tried and true) framework, your app will not get out of control to the point where you find yourself fixing one bug and causing two. I've been there and it's not fun.
I also found that by learning to use a framework you initially don't have to know so much about the patterns behind what you're doing. But before long you'll get a good handle on the patterns used and you'll be able to apply them in new situations or find a better pattern. So it's a good learning tool as well.
I'm sure people will have arguments against using frameworks -- this is just my experience. But if you become familiar with a few, you will likely find that one might be suitable for one project but not another.
As far as Flex frameworks, I personally like PureMVC. In all honesty the only other one I've given a good amount of time to is Cairngorm. But I like PureMVC because it feels right to me, but also it's generally not dependent on so much on the built-in Actionscript classes. For example, it uses it's own notification system. So if the notifications change in Flex, they'll still work in your PureMVC app. Also, the creator Cliff is super helpful in his forums, and he's really passionate about it. And the documentation is great.
I recommend coming up with a super basic app, and building it without any frameworks, then again with a couple others. You don't have to finish the app, but just get a feel for what's behind the frameworks.
You may find value in using a framework if:
You work in a team environment and want to be sure everyone uses the same approach
You have a large, sophisticated app and want to communicate effectively between parts of the app
You want to be able to hire additional programmers and have them be productive quickly
You want to ensure your application is built with a proven architecture
You want to leverage the knowledge of design patterns and solutions that are known to work well
You want to simplify a complex application
Here's a great article on Flex frameworks.
Flex Framework Comparison
And, I agree with the conclusion...Mate is a great Flex Framework.
Another interesting framework not mentioned in this article is Spicefactory's Parsley.
I use PureMVC (which is an MVC-framework for Flex) for my larger applications. Like 99miles stated, it depends on the application size.
If you just have to make a (relatively) small tool/application, you can get it going with just Flex. But if you want to create a large, complex application a Framework might come in handy.
The main reason I use PureMVC in Flex is because of the Model-View-Controller architecture. This separates the presentation layer from the business layer and works a lot with events and notifications. This gives you a lot of control in creating reusable classes/controls in Flex in a relatively simple way.
As I said before, for a small tool/app/website I wouldn't recommend using a framework, because in that case it might be to time consuming and complex. But for the larger applications, frameworks are quite handy.
More information on the MVC architecture can be found here.
Hope this helps :)