Book Image

Flex 3 with Java

Book Image

Flex 3 with Java

Overview of this book

Flex 3 is a great technology for developing Rich Internet Applications for the Web as well as for the desktop. If you are a developer looking to design great-looking and sophisticated user interfaces that resemble desktop-based applications, and want to utilize an existing server technology such as Java to develop RIAs, this book is for you. Targeting developers who want to get started with Adobe Flex 3 programming, this simple and clear handbook introduces Flex technology quickly and straightforwardly. Utilizing your existing knowledge of Java, it gives you the insight and hands-on experience to program with Flex 3. This book provides comprehensive information on various aspects of Flex 3 and ActionScript 3.0. These include developing simple applications, handling events, creating custom components and events, using RPC services, integration with Java and BlazeDS, styling and formatting, and how to package and deploy Flex applications. You will start with downloading, installing and configuring Flex 3 SDK and Flex Builder 3 and learn basic concepts such as what MXML and ActionScript are, understanding UI components, controls, compilers, and more. Further you will develop simple applications and slowly advance into more depth where you will learn advanced concepts such as creating custom components, debugging, integrating with Java, using RPC services, styling, internationalizing, and deploying Flex applications, and more. One of the things you're really going to love about this book is that you will develop a full-blown e-commerce application using a combination of Flex 3, ActionScript 3.0, BlazeDS 3.2, and Java. At the end of the book you will have the knowledge and experience needed to develop Rich Internet Applications.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
Flex 3 with Java
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
Preface
8
Communicating with Server-side Java

Using External API


The External API is a subset of ActionScript 3.0 and enables communication between a Flex application and the container application within which your Flex application is running. When you build a Flex application from Flex Builder, it also generates an HTML wrapper to execute your Flex .swf file into Flash Player instance. This HTML wrapper is known as the container application in this context.

This section gives you an overview of how the External API can be used to establish communication and exchange data between your ActionScript and JavaScript from HTML wrapper and vice versa.

An external API can be very useful in cases where you want to interact with container applications directly, or exchange data between JavaScript and ActionScript (and vice versa). A common example would be if you want to pass some data from an HTML page to your SWF file.

This chapter focuses on the following tasks:

  • Communicating with JavaScript from the ActionScript code

  • Communicating with ActionScript...