SlideshowPro Director via AMFPHP
I really like SlideshowPro Director. With version 1.0.9.9 and below, you could simply access it as an XML service. This was great. Very fast. Past that they reworked the application and introduced an API. This is probably a good move for many, but the API is geared towards PHP websites that want to utilize SSP Director for html/js/css purposes. What I need to do is access the resources through Actionscript 3. My first thought was use AMFPHP and simple access the API through PHP that way, but when accessing the API that way, it was dreadfully slow. It would pause while loading for a good 10 seconds sometimes. The overhead of the PHP backend and the API just don't cut it for use as an Actionscript service.
The solution was to simply skip the middle man and go at the database directly. Now it is lightening fast using this AMFPHP service endpoint:
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 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 | <?php class GalleryService { function GalleryService() { $this->methodTable = array ( "getAlbumById" => array ( "access" => "remote", "description" => "Pings back a message" ) ); } function getAlbumById($albumNumber) { $dbhost = 'YOUR_MYSQL_HOST'; $dbuser = 'YOUR_USER_NAME'; $dbpass = 'YOUR_PASSWORD'; $dbname = 'YOUR_SSP_DATABASE_NAME'; $result_array = array(); $conn = mysql_connect($dbhost, $dbuser, $dbpass) or die ('Error connecting to mysql'); $dbname = 'slideshow'; mysql_select_db($dbname); //be sure to guard against injection by casting the album id to int (thanks Shaun!) $query = "SELECT * FROM ssp_images WHERE aid=" . (int) $albumNumber; $result = mysql_query($query); while($row = mysql_fetch_array($result)){ $result_array[] = 'YOUR_PATH_TO_SSP_ROOT/albums/album-' . $row['aid'] . '/lg/' . $row['src']; } mysql_close(); return $result_array; //an array of url strings } } ?> |
There are all sorts of options you could do for this. You could set up value objects and send those back to Flash. All I needed for my purposes was the array of url strings. Simple, fast, and effective. Now we can manage our galleries with Director, and are free from the constraints of the official SlideshowPro for presentation.
What I really want is an official AMF service through Director. They are using CakePHP, and there are AMF solutions for that. Hopefully that would supply a fast, officially sanctioned AMF solution. Until than, the above works just fine.
Robotlegs IoC/DI Flex Framework Examples Updated
Live demos are available on robotlegs.org here
Acme Widget Factory:
The Acme Widget Factory is modular example and deals with loading multiple modules into a shell and communicating between those modules. The shell and each module has its own context.
Lazy Stack:
Lazy Stack is an example of deferred instantiation of Flex components, and how this is handled by the Robotlegs framework.
Wheres Window:
Where's Window is a simple example to show how to mediate and communicate between a set of instances of the same view component that have individual mediators. In this case, the view components are windows in an AIR application. This uses a proxy to register and manage the currently open unique windows. I am going to write a more detailed breakdown of this particular example soon.
The Elevator Pitch
Robotlegs is an IoC/DI container that is modeled on the PureMVC application structure. It is designed to be MVCS, model-view-controller-service, providing metadata dependency injection across these layers. While following the well organized approach of PureMVC, it eliminates the use of framework singletons and takes full advantage of the Flash Platform to keep the dreaded boiler plate code to a minimum. Eliminating these singletons makes unit testing and TDD much easier, which can be a real struggle when trying to isolate classes for testing where these singleton dependencies exist. Robotlegs is fast, clean, and perhaps more importantly fun to work with. There is a smorgasbord of architectural frameworks available for Flex/AS3, but Robotlegs is worth a look even if you are sick of looking at architectural frameworks.
Unit Testing: IoC/DI, Robotlegs and FlexUnit 4
I've been reviewing the various IoC containers available for Flex/Actionscript. One of the benefits of IoC and DI is that it greatly facilitates unit testing. By injecting our dependencies into our applications actors, we are effectively isolating them from the other classes that make the application function. "So what?"
In computer programming, unit testing is a software verification and validation method in which a programmer tests that individual units of source code are fit for use. A unit is the smallest testable part of an application. In procedural programming a unit may be an individual program, function, procedure, etc., while in object-oriented programming, the smallest unit is a class, which may belong to a base/super class, abstract class or derived/child class.
Ideally, each test case is independent from the others: substitutes like method stubs, mock objects, fakes and test harnesses can be used to assist testing a module in isolation. Unit tests are typically written and run by software developers to ensure that code meets its design and behaves as intended. Its implementation can vary from being very manual (pencil and paper) to being formalized as part of build automation. -wikipedia unit testing entry
To effectively unit test classes, we want them to be as isolated as possible. The class needs to stand on its own and have its functionality vetted to ensure that it behaves as expected. When we start to test how our classes behave together, we have entered the land of integration testing. Integration testing is a worthwhile pursuit also, but before we get to that point, we really want to ensure that our classes are solid by themselves.
Using the example in this Robotlegs Image Gallery demonstration, we are going to test a couple of the classes that make up the application. The demo isn't complex. It has a very simple model, a single service, and just a few views. In fact, it might even seem like a waste of time to unit test a simple example such as this, but the concepts are applicable to larger applications where the benefits of this type of testing really start to pay off.
FlexUnit 4 is the framework that is used here. It provides very handy asynchronous testing, meta data support, and a whole bucket of stellar features that I won't even begin to scratch the surface of. FlexUnit 4 also comes with a graphical testrunner interface:
Robotlegs AS3: A Dependency Injection Driven MVCS Framework for Flash/Flex – Inspired by PureMVC
The quest for a Dependency Injection container continues. The most recent stop on this exploration of the available options has been Robotlegs. Robotlegs AS3 is a DI driven MVCS framework for Flash/Flex inspired by PureMVC. Being a huge fan of PureMVC, this caught my attention immediately. Robotlegs professes to be a framework like PureMVC, but without all the Singeltons, Service Locators, casting and boiler plate we have all come to love. Better yet, it delivers on these claims.
Source for this demo available on github...
Inversion of Control and Dependency Injection with Flex using the Parsley Application Framework – Part 2
This is the second part in a series exploring Inversion of Control and Dependency Injection containers available for Flex. In the first part of the series we discussed what IoC and DI are and how they can benefit our applications. In this part, we will explore the Parsley IoC Container through a simple image gallery application.
Here's the source on github...
Inversion of Control and Dependency Injection in Flex using the Parsley Application Framework – Part 1
The Inversion of Control (IoC) design principle and the related Dependency Injection (DI) design pattern have been around for several years. In the Java world, popular frameworks such as Spring make heavy use of these concepts. With the introduction of Actionscript 3 in 2006, the opportunities for framework development increased greatly. As the community matures, we are starting to see robust tools appear on the development landscape. It is a good time to be a Flash geek!
Through this series of articles, we will delve into the Parsley application framework and look at how it implements IoC and DI in the context of a photo slideshow. Through this example we will look at bootstrapping the container, connecting to services, and populating our components with the results. In this first part, we will get an overview of IoC and DI and talk about some of the benefits and drawbacks of using these concepts in our applications.
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.
Mockups with Balsamiq
We need mockups. They allow us to communicate with developers, clients, users and everybody in between in a common language. I'm a big fan of the Sharpie and a pad of paper. Balsamiq Mockups has created a really great piece of software to speed up the mockup process.
Pleat Menu – Flex Component (draft)
The Pleat menu that is used in Buzzword is really sweet. I wanted to emulate in an attempt to get a reusable component along the same lines. This is the first draft at my attempt, and it admittedly needs some work, but it is still useful, even in its current state.
One of my goals with this is to have all the actual controls in the Pleat available at the top level. This makes it a lot easier to capture in PureMVC (or your event/notification system of choice) and doesn't bury the components. I want to go in and refactor it some more to emulate the Adobe set of Flex components. We'll see if I have the time 
the icons are from the awesome fugue set found here.
The Flickr AS3 API and Flex
We've been using wordpress for our family photo blog for years. It worked well, 4 images in a horizontal scroll. It was kinda tough to navigate though. If you were looking for an image you had to click more... more... more... etc through 3 or 4 years of photos. I wanted something easier to update and navigate. I also wanted to play around with the Flickr API. Luckily the Adobe Flickr AS3 library is very complete. Unfortunately it is very lacking in examples, but the API is well documented so it didn't take too long to get my bearings.
Here's what I came out with. Really it is meant to fill the browser, so check it out here too if you are interested. Source is enabled on the movie. Codes sloppy, but it gets the job done.
