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.
Installing PyAMF 0.4.0rc1 on Windows XP
I wanted to give the latest pyamf a go, but when I used the standard 'setup.py install', the following ominous warning was presented:
error: Python was built with Visual Studio 2003;
extensions must be built with a compiler than can generate compatible binaries.
Visual Studio 2003 was not found on this system. If you have Cygwin installed,
you can try compiling with MingW32, by passing "-c mingw32" to setup.py.
Uh oh! I actually DO have Cygwin installed, but unfortunately this message is a default and not entirely helpful. It did put me on the right path to actually getting it to go.
This webpage has a lot of good information on the subject, and it is where I pulled out these steps:
1. Grab the MingW32 Automated Installer and get it installed. I selected all of the available options as I figured it wouldn't hurt (it didn't)
2. Add the mingw32 binaries to your system path environmental variable (ie c:\mingw32\bin)
3. Tell Python to use mingw32 when it needs to compile a distribution by adding a file called distutils.cfg in this folder: {PYTHON_INSTALL}\lib\distutils\distutils.cfg. The file should contain:
[build]
compiler = mingw32
4. Version number parsing was throwing errors, so you actually have to edit {PYTHON_INSTALL}\lib\distutils\version.py to get it compiled. At line 100 make the following change:
from:
1 2 | version_re = re.compile(r'^(\d+) \. (\d+) (\. (\d+))? ([ab](\d+))?$', re.VERBOSE) |
to:
1 2 | version_re = re.compile(r'^(\d+) \. (\d+) (\. (\d+))? (\. (\d+))?$', re.VERBOSE) |
now with all that done, just run 'setup.py install' and it should compile as expected. Easy as... I dunno, it is actually kind of confusing, but it works and now I can give pyamf a whirl with the c-ext enabled.
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
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 | 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
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 | 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
1 2 3 4 | 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.
VEsession – Flex photography studio management and client ordering application
My wife saw the application that I am working on at work to manage tasks and immediately asked, "Where's mine?"
21st century honey-do list.
So far, this is what I have created. PureMVC is the underlying framework. The photos are loaded from SlideShowPro Director XML galleries. Unforutately, the most recent version of SSP-D won't let you use it as a service in this way. This older version is has all the functionality I need though, so it isn't an issue. Eventually I will implement functionality to eliminate the need for SSP-D with some gallery management. It will be better to keep it all under one roof.
The backend is Django using pyAMF for communications back and forth. Django elminates the pain of CRUD operations and provides an excellent admin interface for free.
My goal is to open source the application and provide it as a PureMVC/Django example.
UPDATED: This version is a little jacked because I am working on a new version. The demo images are way too big and cause the application to scroll in unsightly ways. The new demo is located here, and uses the same credentials as below.
[Here is the demo]
user: demo_client
pass:demo_client
[source]
Do to some, uh, laziness on my part, this will only compile with strict mode turned off The new version does not have this problem.
