Building Blocks even if you aren’t testing your code, you should write testable code

18May/0920

Piping the Machine: PureMVC Multicore with Pipes and the Finite State Machine (FSM)

This is going to be a walkthrough of making use of PureMVC Multicore (AS3). To help in building a PureMVC Multicore application, we are going to make use of the StateMachine utility for initial setup and configuration as well as the Pipes utility for communication between cores.

Here's the Source.

Get Adobe Flash player

Filed under: AIR, actionscript, design patterns, flex, puremvc, pyAMF, python, software architecture Continue reading
5Feb/090

Debugging your AIR/Flex application with Arthropod

Arthropod is an external Debug trace window for Flash/Flex/AIR. Drop a simple class into your project and it will accept logging from the application/swf. I'm using it for debugging around the office with our internal project management AIR application with great success.

Filed under: AIR, flex No Comments
11Oct/0815

Flex Date and Time (datetime) Picker Control

I saw one of these at some point, but couldn't find it when I needed it again. Pretty simple, the control has a property called selectedDate that returns a date object represented by the selected date and time. You can also feed it a Date and it will adjust to that. It is on a 12 hour clock. It dispatches a change event (Event.CHANGE) as a new date/time is selected.

There is an Inspectable property called minuteIncrement to adjust the increment on the minute stepper. I couldn't figure out how to have double digits on the 0-9 minutes. If anybody knows how I might achieve that, please let me know.

Here's the Source

Filed under: AIR, components, flex 15 Comments
21Sep/088

Django Authorization from Flex/AIR via PyAMF

Django views serve nicely as service end-points for Flex applications. Here are some notes on maintaining authenticated sessions between a Flex/Air/Flash application and your Django backend.

gateway.py

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from pyamf.remoting.gateway.django import DjangoGateway
 
import myproject.myapp.views as views
 
gw = DjangoGateway({
    'login'                       : views.login_user,
    'logout'                     : views.logout_user,
})

views.py

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import pyamf
from django.contrib import auth
from django.contrib.auth import authenticate, login, logout
from django.contrib.auth.decorators import login_required
from django.contrib.auth.models import User
 
try:
    pyamf.register_class( User,  'django.contrib.auth.models.User')
except ValueError:
    print "Classes already registered"
 
def logout_user(http_request):
    logout(http_request)
 
def login_user(http_request, username, password):
    user = authenticate(username=username, password=password)
    if user is not None:
        login(http_request, user)
        return user
    return None
 
@login_required
def registered_user_protected_function(http_request):
    return "You are a registered user."
 
@login_required
def staff_protected_function(http_request):
    if http_request.user.is_staff != True: return None
    return "You are staff."

from flex

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var netConnection:NetConnection = new NetConnection();
netConnection.connect("http://mysite.com/gateway");
var responder:Responder = new Responder(loginResult, handleFault);
netConnection.call("login", responder, "username", "password")

The http_request carries a reference to the currently authenticated user throughout the session. This works for web based Flex application as well as AIR applications on the desktop. Note that I am using a try/except on the pyamf class registration calls. Because this is session based, the classes only need to be registered once. Without the trap, it throws a TypeError letting you know the registration has already taken place.

Django User Authentication Documentation
All of the various things you can do with authentication in Django. It is, of course, based mostly on the use of the very nice Django HTML template system. While those bits aren't handy to the likes of us, it is a good read either way.

pyAMF ByteArray example
This example shows the basic structure for setting up Django/Flex communication. It doesn't cover authentication, but covers a good bit of territory with examples in Flash and Flex.

Filed under: AIR, actionscript, django, flex, pyAMF, python 8 Comments
17Aug/089

Integrating Adobe AIR, Cairngorm, PureMVC, LiveCycle Data Services (LCDS), MySQL and Hibernate

This post is going to cover the use of Adobe AIR, PureMVC, cairngorm, MySQL, LiveCycle Data Services (LCDS), and Hibernate. It utilizes these tools to create a simple image management system. The focus is on the configuration of the server to integrate Hibernate with LCDS and access that configuration from an AIR client.

Filed under: AIR, hibernate, lcds Continue reading
23Mar/080

Christian Cantrell's ever-growing selection of useful Actionscript 3/AIR libraries.

Here's the full list of what he has on Google Code.

The CoreLib is essential, but he's been busy writing useful libraries for AIR. I've used the notification library, which has some great features and makes notifications on the desktop sensible. The exchange library is interesting, for sure. They are all worth checking out.

There are also a number of interesting example applications using AIR, including a motion detection application, an Amazon S3 interface, a screen saver, and an MS Exchange calendar.

Filed under: AIR, actionscript, libraries No Comments
14Mar/082

Complex DataGrid filterFunction in Flex/Air

So I need to add robust user controlled filtering options in the application I am working on. This problem has dogged me for a month or two, with my co-workers politely insisting on more and better ways to filter their data. This is completely understandable. When you are staring down a datagrid that is virtually 12 feet long, getting to what you actually want to see is important.

This 2006 article from Bruce Phillips was a big help in the basic concept of multiple input filtering. As is his normal style, it is littered with good references to the source material from his research. This is only considering two filter parameters, however, and I need to consider n parameters, that will probably shift as the needs of the end user grow.

The problem is that each new filtering parameter exponentially increases the complexity of the filterFunction. I can see the pattern, but I haven't quite reached the epiphany that I need to break it down into one of those tight little functions I see real programmers creating (unfortunately, I haven't seen any that address my specific problem).

I thought I'd share my naive, and perhaps confusing filterFunction. It would be great to hear how others approach this problem, and come up with a concise solution.

This function utilizes a TextInput to get text search input from the user. It uses
a series of CheckBoxes for various status condition to generate an array [ 1, 0, 1, 1 ]
to represent their on/off state. It also uses two combo boxes to filter by staff members
as well as clients.

filterFunction:

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private function filterCases(item:CaseVO):Boolean
{
	//is the item visible or hidden
	var result:Boolean = false;
	//array of CheckBox.selected property values
       // in handy ones and zeroes. This is returned from a function
       // that takes the actual CheckBoxes as input and gives me this.
	var case_mask:Array = [ 1, 0, 1, 1 ];
        //a couple VOs to verify the selectedItem in the ComboBoxes.
	var client:PersonVO;
	var expert:PersonVO;
	//array iteration variable
	var i:int;
 
	var dateFormat:DateFormatter = new DateFormatter( )
	dateFormat.formatString = 'MM/DD/YY'
 
	//text search
	if ( caseGrid.filter.caseNumInput.text.length > 0 )
	{
		var searchResult:Boolean = ( ( String( '0' + item.case_id.toString() ).search( caseGrid.filter.caseNumInput.text ) >= 0 ) ||
										( item.style.toLowerCase().search( caseGrid.filter.caseNumInput.text.toLowerCase() ) >= 0 )  );
		if( item.description )
		{
			searchResult = searchResult || ( item.description.toLowerCase().search( caseGrid.filter.caseNumInput.text.toLowerCase() ) >= 0 )
		}
 
		if ( item.client_id )
		{
			searchResult = searchResult || ( personProxy.personFromId( item.client_id ).fullName.toLowerCase().search( caseGrid.filter.caseNumInput.text.toLowerCase() ) >= 0 )
		}
 
		if ( item.date_of_accident )
		{
			searchResult = searchResult || ( dateFormat.format(item.date_of_accident).search( caseGrid.filter.caseNumInput.text ) >= 0 )
		}
 
		for ( i = 0; i < case_mask.length; i++ )
		{
			if ( caseGrid.filter.client.selectedItem is PersonVO )
			{
				client = caseGrid.filter.client.selectedItem
 
				//is an expert selected for filtering also?
				if ( caseGrid.filter.expert.selectedItem is PersonVO && searchResult)
				{
					expert = caseGrid.filter.expert.selectedItem;
					//filter for client, expert, and status
					if ( (case_mask[i] && item.status == String( i + 1 ) )
							&& item.client_id == client.id
							&& item.expert_id == expert.id && searchResult  )
						result = true;
				}
				else
				{
					//filter for client and status
					if ( (case_mask[i] && item.status == String( i + 1 ) )
							&& item.client_id == client.id && searchResult  )
						result = true;
				}
			}
			else if ( caseGrid.filter.expert.selectedItem is PersonVO )
			{
				expert = caseGrid.filter.expert.selectedItem;
				for ( i = 0; i < case_mask.length; i++ )
				{
					//filter for expert and status
					 if ( (case_mask[i] && item.status == String( i + 1 ) )
					 		&& item.expert_id == expert.id && searchResult  )
					 	result = true
				}
 
			}
			else
			{
				//filter for client and status
				if ( (case_mask[i] && item.status == String( i + 1 ) )
						&& searchResult  )
					result = true;
			}
		}
	}
	//see if a client is selected for filtering
	else if ( caseGrid.filter.client.selectedItem is PersonVO )
	{
		client = caseGrid.filter.client.selectedItem
		for ( i = 0; i < case_mask.length; i++ )
		{
			//is an expert selected for filtering also?
			if ( caseGrid.filter.expert.selectedItem is PersonVO )
			{
				expert = caseGrid.filter.expert.selectedItem;
				//filter for client, expert, and status
				if ( (case_mask[i] && item.status == String( i + 1 ) )
						&& item.client_id == client.id
						&& item.expert_id == expert.id  )
					result = true;
			}
			else
			{
				//filter for client and status
				if ( (case_mask[i] && item.status == String( i + 1 ) )
						&& item.client_id == client.id  )
					result = true;
			}
		}
	}
	//client isn't selected, check the expert filter.
	else if ( caseGrid.filter.expert.selectedItem is PersonVO )
	{
		expert = caseGrid.filter.expert.selectedItem;
		for ( i = 0; i < case_mask.length; i++ )
		{
			//filter for expert and status
			 if ( (case_mask[i] && item.status == String( i + 1 ) )
			 		&& item.expert_id == expert.id  )
			 	result = true
		}
 
	}
	//finally, filter for the status
	else
	{
		for ( i = 0; i < case_mask.length; i++ )
		{
			//filter for status
			if ( case_mask[i] && item.status == String( i + 1 ) )
				result = true;
		}
	}
 
	return result
}

You can see that I am repeating myself from the top down to the final else statement, cutting the filter parameters down like a layer cake. It works, and is relatively quick on a grid with 1500 or so items. This just screams "REFACTOR ME" every time I see it.

Filed under: AIR, OCD, actionscript, flex 2 Comments
10Jan/080

Maximizing your AIR application programatically – stage.nativeWindow.maximize()

Just be sure to call it in an applicationComplete handler. My attempts to call it from creationComplete were resulting in a null object reference.

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stage.nativeWindow.maximize()
Filed under: AIR, actionscript No Comments
   

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