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

An example: Building a book explorer


By this time, you would be comfortable in writing Flex applications by using many features of Flex and ActionScript, which you have learned in the previous chapters. In this section, we will build something more complicated and interesting by using many features, including custom components, events, data binding, E4X, loading external XML data, and so on.

We will build a sample books explorer, which will load a books catalog from an external XML file and allow the users to explore and view details of books. We will also build a simple shopping cart component, which will list books that a user would add to cart by clicking on the add to cart button.

Create a new Flex project using Flex Builder. Once the project is created, create an \assets\images\ folder under its src folder. This folder will be used to store images used in this application. Now start creating the following source files into its source folder.

Let's start by creating a simple book catalog...