Effortless Flex 4 development Description based on print version record. - Includes index

457 Pages·2010·24.117 MB·English

by  Ullman, Larry E

EFFORTLESS
FLEX 4
DEVELOPMENT
LARRY ULLMAN
Effortless Flex 4 Development
Larry Ullman
New Riders
1249 Eighth Street
Berkeley, CA 94710
510/524-2178
510/524-2221 (fax)
Find us on the Web at: www.newriders.com
To report errors, please send a note to: [email protected]
New Riders is an imprint of Peachpit, a division of Pearson Education.
Copyright © 2010 by Larry Ullman
Editor: Rebecca Gulick
Production Coordinator: Myrna Vladic
Compositor: Debbie Roberti
Copy Editor: Elle Yoko Suzuki
Proofreader: Patricia Pane
Cover and Interior Design: Terri Bogaards
Indexer: Valerie Haynes Perry
Technical Editor: Ryan Stewart
Notice of Rights
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
For information on getting permission for reprints and excerpts, contact [email protected].
Notice of Liability
The information in this book is distributed on an “As Is” basis, without warranty. While every precaution has
been taken in the preparation of the book, neither the author nor Peachpit shall have any liability to any
person or entity with respect to any loss or damage caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by
the instructions contained in this book or by the computer software and hardware products described in it.
Trademarks
Adobe, the Adobe logo, Flash, the Flash logo, Flash Builder, Flash Catalyst, Flash Lite, and Flash Player are
either registered trademarks or trademarks of Adobe Systems Incorporated in the United States and/or
other countries. MySQL is a registered trademark of MySQL AB in the United States and in other countries.
Macintosh and Mac OS X are registered trademarks of Apple Computer, Inc. Microsoft and Windows are
registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. Other product names used in this book may be trademarks
of their own respective owners. Images of Web sites in this book are copyrighted by the original holders
and are used with their kind permission. This book is not officially endorsed by nor affiliated with any of the
above companies, including MySQL AB.
Many of the designations used by manufacturers and sellers to distinguish their products are claimed as
trademarks. Where those designations appear in this book, and Peachpit was aware of a trademark claim,
the designations appear as requested by the owner of the trademark. All other product names and services
identified throughout this book are used in editorial fashion only and for the benefit of such companies with
no intention of infringement of the trademark. No such use, or the use of any trade name, is intended to
convey endorsement or other affiliation with this book.
ISBN 13: 978-0-321-70594-5
ISBN 10: 0-321-70594-7
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed and bound in the United States of America
With eternal gratitude to all the doctors, nurses,
and staff at Fresenius, CMSA, and Johns Hopkins,
most especially to Dr. Fine, who has gone well
above the call of duty time and again.
SPECIAL THANKS
Bucketsful of thanks to everyone at Peachpit Press/New Riders for their assistance, patience,
and hard work, particularly:
My favorite-est editor ever, Rebecca Gulick. Thanks, thanks, and thanks!
Elle Suzuki and Patricia Pane, for the extra coat of polish on my writing.
Myrna and Deb, who can magically take a Word doc and some images and turn that into an
actual book.
Valerie Haynes Perry, the indexer, for making sure readers can find what they’re looking for
amongst all those pesky pages and words.
Everyone else at Peachpit for doing what’s required to create, publish, distribute, market,
sell, and support these books. And thanks for sparing the extra pages when you can!
Jason Batten, for taking the time and putting in the effort to read through the chapters and
provide feedback. The input, and the votes of confidence, really helped!
Ryan Stewart at Adobe, who provided the technical review, making the book accurate.
And lots of thanks to Mike Potter at Adobe, who got me interested in Flex in the first place
(well, more interested), and did what he could to make this book happen. Big thanks for all
the support, too!
CONTENTS
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiii
What is Flash? ................................................. xiii
Why use Flash? ................................................ xiv
The Case for RIAs .............................................. xiv
The Case for Flash .............................................. xv
The Case Against Flash ......................................... xvi
What is Flex? .................................................. xvi
About This Book ............................................... xvii
PART One: THe FUnDAMenTALS .......................................... 1
Chapter One: Building Flex Applications ................................... 2
A Survey of the Land ............................................. 2
The Flex Framework .............................................. 3
The Software .................................................... 4
Deployment ..................................................... 5
Basic MXML ..................................................... 5
Using Flash Builder .............................................. 8
A Quick Tour of Flash Builder ...................................... 8
Creating a Simple Application .................................... 11
Saying “Hello” to the World ...................................... 12
Deploying Web Applications ..................................... 14
The Open Source Alternative .................................... 15
Installation and Setup ........................................... 17
Creating a Simple Application .................................... 20
Saying “Hello” to the World ...................................... 21
Deploying Web Applications ..................................... 22
Creating Desktop Applications .................................. 24
A Word on Certificates ........................................... 24
Desktop Applications in Flash Builder ............................ 24
Desktop Applications the Open-Source Way ...................... 28
vi CONTENTS
Getting Help .................................................... 32
On the Web ..................................................... 32
Within Flash Builder ............................................. 34
Chapter Two: User Interface Basics ........................................ 36
Things to Know ................................................. 37
Comments within MXML ......................................... 37
Adding Components ............................................ 37
Debugging ...................................................... 40
Component Types and Terminology .............................. 41
Customizing the Application .................................... 42
Simple Controls ................................................ 44
Text Controls .................................................... 45
Media Controls ................................................. 47
Other Controls .................................................. 50
Controlling the Layout .......................................... 51
Layout Classes .................................................. 52
Layout Containers ............................................... 53
Constraint-Based Layout ........................................ 55
Creating Forms ................................................. 56
Putting It All Together . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
Chapter Three: ActionScript You Need to Know ........................... 64
Data Binding ................................................... 64
OOP Fundamentals ............................................. 66
ActionScript and MXML ......................................... 69
The Compilation Process ........................................ 69
Including ActionScript ........................................... 70
Importing ActionScript .......................................... 72
ActionScript Comments ......................................... 74
Simple Data Types .............................................. 75
Making Variables Bindable ...................................... 77
Constants ...................................................... 78
Operators ...................................................... 79
Creating Functions .............................................. 80
CONTENTS vii
Looking Ahead: the Click Event .................................. 82
Control Structures .............................................. 85
Arrays .......................................................... 89
Loops .......................................................... 93
for Loops ....................................................... 93
while Loops ..................................................... 95
Manipulating Components ...................................... 95
Debugging Techniques .......................................... 99
Chapter Four: Event Management ......................................... 102
Fundamental Concepts ......................................... 103
The Event Object ............................................... 105
Event Flow ..................................................... 107
Inline Event Handling .......................................... 109
Functions as Event Handlers ................................... 110
Creating Simple Event Handlers .................................. 111
Sending Values to Event Handlers ............................... 112
Sending Events to Functions .................................... 112
Using Specific Events ........................................... 117
System Events ................................................. 118
User Events ................................................... 120
Keyboard and Mouse Events .................................... 120
Keyboard and Mouse Event Objects ............................. 122
Other User-Driven Events ....................................... 123
Managing Event Handlers with ActionScript .................... 124
Watching for Phases ........................................... 126
Removing Event Handlers ...................................... 129
PART TWO: DATA AnD COMMUnICATIOnS .......................... 133
Chapter Five: Displaying Data ............................................. 134
Representing Data ............................................. 134
In ActionScript ................................................. 135
In MXML ....................................................... 139
Providing Data to Components ................................. 144
ComboBox and DropDownList Components ..................... 146
Events ......................................................... 147
An Example .................................................... 149
viii CONTENTS
The List Component ............................................ 152
List Basics ..................................................... 152
List Events ..................................................... 154
The Tree Component ........................................... 155
Tree Events .................................................... 157
An Example .................................................... 157
The DataGrid Component ...................................... 160
DataGrid Events ................................................ 162
Updating Data in a DataGrid .................................... 162
Chapter Six: Manipulating Data ........................................... 168
Using Label Functions ......................................... 168
ComboBox, DropDownMenu, List, and Tree Label Functions ...... 169
DataGrid and DataGridColumn Label Functions .................. 171
Item Renderers ................................................ 174
External Item Renderers ........................................ 176
Declared Item Renderers ....................................... 177
Inline Renderers ............................................... 178
Drop-In Item Renderers ......................................... 179
Comparing Component Renderers .............................. 180
Changing the Editor ........................................... 181
The DataGroup Component . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182
Creating a DataGroup .......................................... 182
Controlling the Layout .......................................... 183
Formatting Data ............................................... 184
Creating Formatters ............................................ 185
Applying Formatters ............................................ 187
Validating Data ................................................ 189
Validator Fundamentals ........................................ 190
Validators in More Detail ....................................... 192
The DateValidator .............................................. 193
The CreditCardValidator ........................................ 195
Creating Validators in ActionScript .............................. 196
An Example .................................................... 198
CONTENTS ix
Chapter Seven: Common Data Formats ................................... 202
The Client-Server Relationship ................................. 203
Four Data Formats ............................................. 204
Plain Text ...................................................... 205
XML ........................................................... 205
JSON .......................................................... 208
AMF ........................................................... 210
Data Formats in PHP ........................................... 211
Data Types in ActionScript ..................................... 223
Plain Text ...................................................... 223
Debugging .................................................... 228
Chapter Eight: Using Simple Services .................................... 230
Flash Security Model .......................................... 231
Setting Up a Local Environment ................................ 233
Creating the PHP Scripts ....................................... 236
The MySQL Script .............................................. 237
Retrieving Employees .......................................... 237
Adding Employees ............................................. 240
Flex Networking Components .................................. 243
The HTTPService Component ................................... 244
Creating ....................................................... 244
Invoking a Service .............................................. 246
Handling the Response ......................................... 246
Handling Response Errors ...................................... 248
Putting It All Together .......................................... 248
Sending Data to a Server ....................................... 251
Flash Builder Data Wizards .................................... 260
Creating a Client-Server Application ............................. 261
Adding Some MXML ............................................ 262
Creating Services .............................................. 263
Testing Services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 266
Making Changes ............................................... 267
Configuring Services .......................................... 268
Using the Services ............................................. 271
Generating Forms .............................................. 273
Using the Network Monitor .................................... 278