newschuyl - Flex

AMF Explorer 0.6

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 21:34:00-0400

This evening I released AMF Explorer 0.6. This version adds a custom binary cache that should fix issues some users were seeing with AMF response deserialization. I'm still waiting for AMO public approval, so if you are using AMF Explorer you will need to manually update the add-on from the AMO site. Please be sure to report any issues to the AMF Explorer bug tracker at RIAForge. Thanks.

AMF Explorer 0.5

Tue, 23 Feb 2010 12:52:00-0400

I've released a few updates to AMF Explorer over the last week or so. Improvements include support for small messages, better formatting, and better error messages. You can get the latest from the AMO site. Unfortunately automatic updates are not enabled because AMF Explorer has yet to go public. If you are using AMF Explorer please consider taking the time to register and review the add-on on the AMO site as this will help with the AMO review process. Once the add-on is public it will be easier to find and install as it will not be marked as experimental and automatic updates will be enabled. Thanks!

Announcing AMF Explorer

Wed, 17 Feb 2010 11:30:00-0400

Back in late 2008 the nsITraceableChannel interface was added to the Mozilla browser allowing extension developers to intercept incoming HTTP responses. At that time I pondered the possibility of adding AMF support to Firebug, however life got in the way and I never really had time to fully explore what it would take to do this. That is until now. Today I'm happy to announce that I'm finally releasing AMF Explorer. [More]

Swiz RPC Library on RIAForge

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 08:45:00-0400

Just a quick post to let folks know the source for the Swiz RPC Library, as well as the compiled SWC, are now available on RIAForge: http://swizrpc.riaforge.org.

Swiz RPC Library

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 16:25:00-0400

A couple of weeks ago Joe Rinehart blogged about his RemoteMethodMediator for Swiz. Like Joe, I've found that most of my executeSeviceCall callback methods were just dispatching events via Swiz, so I liked the idea of skipping callbacks completely. However, I didn't really like Joe's implementation, so I yesterday I did some playing around and came up with the a Swiz RPC library. The library has swiz specific implementations of mx.rpc.remoting.mxml.RemoteObject, mx.rpc.remoting.mxml.Operation, and mx.rpc.CallResponder. These classes can be used in your bean loader in place of the standard mx:RemoteObject, mx:method, and mx:CallResponder tags. [More]

Data-Centric Development with ColdFusion 9 and Flash Builder 4

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 20:39:00-0400

The second part of my Data-Centric Development with ColdFusion 9 and Flash Builder 4 tutorial is up on DZone. This tutorial builds on the project introduced in part one of the series and covers the new paging and client-side data management features available in Flash Builder 4. Data-Centric Development with ColdFusion 9 and Flash Builder 4 - Part 2 If you want to find out even more about these seriously cool features be sure to check out the following links:

Data-Centric Development with ColdFusion 9 and Flash Builder 4

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 21:29:00-0400

I just posted the first of a two part tutorial over on DZone which walks through using some of the new data-centric development (DCD) features in Flash Builder 4 with ColdFusion 9. Data-Centric Development with ColdFusion 9 and Flash Builder 4 - Part I While Flash Builder is still in beta, the DCD features are very impressive and should simplify many ColdFusion/Flex work flows. Please check out the tutorial and let me know what you think. (And be sure to vote it up if you like it!)

New ColdFusion Builder and Flex Builder Betas

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 10:43:00-0400

In addition to today's release of ColdFusion 9, ColdFusion Builder Beta 2 and Flex Builder 4 Beta 2 have been released on Adobe Labs.

ColdFusion 9: onCFCRequest and Flash Remoting

Tue, 04 Aug 2009 16:41:00-0400

ColdFusion 9 introduced the new onCFCRequest method. Unfortunately, this new method breaks Flash Remoting requests. To get around this issue you can resort to a modified version of the old onRequest hack. If you have an Application.cfc that covers remote components that will be used for Flash Remoting, you can add the following to your onRequestStart method:

This will remove the onCFCRequest method for the current request and allow your Flash Remoting call to work. (Note: you may need to search for different paths depending on your BlazeDS endpoint configurations. If you don't know what I'm talking about here you will most likely be fine with the default "/flex2gateway".)

Using Secure AMF Channels in Swiz

Thu, 16 Jul 2009 10:11:00-0400

This question comes up quite a bit on the Swiz mailing list so I thought I'd write a blog post on how I handle this. For those new to Swiz, one very cool feature of the framework is the DynamicChannelSet wich allows you to remove the dependency on services-config.xml. Here is an example, from the Swiz docs, of how you would use DynamicChannelSet in your Bean Loader: [More]

ColdFusion 9: Flex Improvements

Wed, 15 Jul 2009 14:20:00-0400

With the release of the ColdFusion 9 beta I thought I'd share a few of the Flex integration improvements I've been checking out this week. First, ColdFusion 9 now uses Blaze DS to power Flex remoting and messaging. ColdFusion has had remoting support for several versions, but before CF 9 you had to install LCDS or BlazeDS to get Flex messaging. With the move to Blaze DS there is no longer an integrated LCDS Express installation option, so if you want RTMP or data services you will have to buy a separate LCDS license or install the free LiveCycle Data Services ES Single-CPU License version yourself. I know some people feel this is a loss but I'm pretty happy having messaging available out of the box, without the single CPU limitation. [More]

CFEventGatewayAdapter and Selectors

Tue, 28 Apr 2009 15:49:00-0400

Lately I've been doing a lot of work with Flex messaging using ColdFusion and BlazeDS. Recently I was trying to get message filtering working using the Flex Consumer component's selector property. After a few false starts I found that I just couldn't get selectors to work using either BlazeDS or LCDS. [More]

BlazeDS Consumer Selector Gotcha

Tue, 14 Apr 2009 13:37:00-0400

When working with Flex messaging, a Consumer component can filter the messages it receives using a selector. The selector uses SQL 92 syntax to filter against message headers, so if my messages contained a header named roomID I could write something like:


    myConsumer.selector = "roomID = 1";

The problem I ran into today was that I wanted to filter on multiple values using an IN clause, however when I tried to do the following I got no messages:


    myConsumer.selector = "roomID IN (1,2,3)";

Turns out that I needed to modify my IN statement to filter for string values as opposed to numeric values:


    myConsumer.selector = "roomID IN ('1','2','3')";

This was a little confusing because I was able to filter on single values using numeric values, as in my first example above, but filtering on multiple values required string values. I'm using BlazeDS with ColdFusion, so I'm not sure if this is specific to my configuration, but if you run into issues trying to filter on numeric values using an IN clause, try using strings instead. UPDATE: After further testing I'm not entirely sure that selectors work at all with the ColdFusion Event Gateway Adapter. I'm still trying to work this out, but right now the first example above doesn't seem to be working for me, even if I check for a string value. If anyone has experience using selectors with CF please let me know...

Flex Remoting to CFCs under a Fusebox 5.5.1 Application.cfc

Fri, 06 Mar 2009 14:55:00-0400

I recently started using Fusebox again and one issue I ran into was that Flex Remoting calls to CFCs under my Fusebox application were not working. (The application in question used an extended version of Fusebox's Application.cfc.) To work around the issue I put the remote components under a different, minimal, Application.cfc which used the same name as my main applicaiton. Something like the following:

This fixed the issue, but I was still a little puzzled. It is well know that the Application.cfc onRequest method doesn't play well with Flex Remoting, but I looked at Fusebox's Application.cfc and thought it was handling the issue with the following code in onRequestStart:

Well, today I had a little bit of time to look into this and it turns out that for Flex Remoting requests the targetPage is "/flex2gateway," not the name of the target CFC. It was a bit of a "duh" moment, because if you have ever looked at a services-config.xml file or watched Flex Remoting requests via a proxy like ServiceCapture then you know the URL used is something like http://localhost/flex2gateway. Anyway, to fix the issue I ended up modifing the Fusebox Application CFC code above to the following:

Now I no longer need to remember to add a custom Application.cfc for remote CFCs. It is important to note that Flash Remoting can be configured to use any URL, but this at least covers the default configuration for ColdFusion.

Debugging Flex with ColdFire

Tue, 23 Dec 2008 14:24:00-0400

Recently I went back to doing Flex work and one of the things I immediately missed was ColdFire. So I decided to take a look to see what could be done to get my favorite debugging tool working with CF powered Flex applications. Turns out it wasn't all that hard. First though, check out the video below to get an idea of what I'm talking about. (Sorry, no sound as I recorded this at work.) [More]