Just add water

In the last month I have been working intensively to set up a professional environment for developing Rich Internet Applications at enterprise level.

Here is a summary of the setup I use:

 

 

IDE

Eclipse

Plugin - Subclipse

Plugin - FlexBuilder

Plugin - PHPEclipse

Plugin - Mylyn

 

 

Testing environment

Backend - JUnit

Frontend - FlexUnit

Frontend - FlexMonkey, run with FlexMonkeyLauncher, just put it in the same library as the swf-file. Record the steps, save them as test cases.

Testing with mock objects in frontend and backend

 

Code coverage

Backend - Java Code Coverage - Cobertura

Frontend - FlexCover (I am not using this, as it doesn’t really make sense to me with Flex development)

 

Performance testing

Backend - Java (JProbe or similar)

JMeter - double click “ApacheJMeter.jar”

 

Frontend - Flex Profiler (still need to set this up)

 

 

Compilation, dependencies and deployment environment

 

Maven2 with Flex-Mojos

 

 

Continuous Integration server

Continuum

 

I have set up Maven to generate several reports about the code style, changes, etc.

 

Maven links:

—————–

 

Improving site reporting

 

http://www.javaworld.com/javaworld/jw-02-2006/jw-0227-maven.html?page=1

 

 

Maven configuration

—————————-

To restart tomcat from within Maven on a Mac, add the following:

 

<settings xmlns=”http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0″

   xmlns:xsi=”http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance”

   xsi:schemaLocation=”http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0

                      http://maven.apache.org/xsd/settings-1.0.0.xsd”>

  <servers>

<server>

<id>tomcatserver</id>

<username>root</username>

<password>admin</password>

</server>

</servers>

</settings>

 

to a file called: settings.xml and put it in: ~/.m2

 

For compilation of Adobe with Maven. Install the following in your local repository:

—————————————————————————————————————

mvn install:install-file -DgroupId=com.adobe.flex.sdk -DartifactId=playerglobal -Dversion=3.2.0 -Dpackaging=swc -Dfile=”/Applications/Development/Adobe Flex Builder 3 Plug-in/sdks/3.2.0/frameworks/libs/player/10/playerglobal.swc”

 

mvn install:install-file -DgroupId=com.adobe.flex.sdk -DartifactId=flex -Dversion=3.2.0 -Dpackaging=swc -Dfile=”/Applications/Development/Adobe Flex Builder 3 Plug-in/sdks/3.2.0/frameworks/libs/flex.swc”

 

mvn install:install-file -DgroupId=com.adobe.flex.sdk -DartifactId=rpc -Dversion=3.2.0 -Dpackaging=swc -Dfile=”/Applications/Development/Adobe Flex Builder 3 Plug-in/sdks/3.2.0/frameworks/libs/rpc.swc”

 

mvn install:install-file -DgroupId=com.adobe.flex.sdk -DartifactId=datavisualization -Dversion=3.2.0 -Dpackaging=swc -Dfile=”/Applications/Development/Adobe Flex Builder 3 Plug-in/sdks/3.2.0/frameworks/libs/datavisualization.swc”

 

mvn install:install-file -DgroupId=com.adobe.flex.sdk -DartifactId=framework-rb -Dversion=3.2.0 -Dpackaging=swc -Dfile=”/Applications/Development/Adobe Flex Builder 3 Plug-in/sdks/3.2.0/frameworks/locale/en_US/framework_rb.swc”

 

mvn install:install-file -DgroupId=com.adobe.flex.sdk -DartifactId=rpc-rb -Dversion=3.2.0 -Dpackaging=swc -Dfile=”/Applications/Development/Adobe Flex Builder 3 Plug-in/sdks/3.2.0/frameworks/locale/en_US/rpc_rb.swc”

 

mvn install:install-file -DgroupId=com.adobe.flex.sdk -DartifactId=datavisualization-rb -Dversion=3.2.0 -Dpackaging=swc -Dfile=”/Applications/Development/Adobe Flex Builder 3 Plug-in/sdks/3.2.0/frameworks/locale/en_US/datavisualization_rb.swc”

 

Frameworks

—————–

 

Frontend

Technology - Flex

Frameworks - Mate (IoC pattern)

 

Backend

Technology - Java

 

Frameworks - Spring (IoC pattern)

- DAO (separate data access layer from service layer)

- DTO (improve performance)

 

- Transaction Management (still to be decided)

Being involved in a large scale application lately I have explored a little in getting a proper continuous integration environment setup for Flex.

We will probably be using Mate to keep things decoupled. Mate uses IoC - Inversion of Control, also called dependency injection, which gives the cleanest views I have yet seen in Flex. Furthermore is it extremely non-obtrusive and is based on Flex own events. This means that we can easily integrate other frameworks/design patterns, should we find the need for that.

With Mate it is easy to Mock all services, which greatly improves testability and helps in the development phase, since the application can run without the need for server side code.

Anyways, back to the subject on hand. My goal with implementing ideas from Continuous Integration in Flex I am so far using the following:

Maven - for keeping control of dependencies and for full compilation of everything and deployment of the application with one command

Fluint (similar to FlexUnit) - unit testing of Flex code

FlexCover - code coverage

SVN - for source control

Trac - for keeping track of issues

Of course this application will also have a backend and the great thing with Maven is that it can compile both the frontend and the backend.

I have XAMPP installed for easy deployment of PHP applications.

I ran into a problem when trying the Akelos PHP framework. When creating a new application I got the following error:

Can’t connect to local MySQL server through socket ‘/Applications/xampp/xamppfiles/var/mysql/mysql.sock’

To solve this I had to do the following:

cd /var
sudo mkdir mysql
sudo ln -s /Applications/xampp/xamppfiles/var/mysql/mysql.sock /var/mysql/mysql.sock
sudo killall mysqld
sudo ./mampp start

Which links the mysql socket to the Xampp installation and kills the instance of the mysql running before launching xampp.

Just a good link to a great small application to manage your databases on a Mac.

Sequel Pro is open source and free to use.

Don’t forget to add the correct path to mysql.sock when connecting to your local databases. In my case it was located here: /Applications/xampp/xamppfiles/var/mysql/mysql.sock

Lately I have tested frameworks for Flex/Flash development.

I started out porting a project management application from my old Flash MVC implementation to a PureMVC Flex implementation. I liked the decoupling and use of Events that PureMVC promotes, but still think that it is a little cumbersome to use and requires too many classes.

I continued my testing by using Cairngorm to build a small money management application. It fast became clear to me that I preferred the PureMVC framework.

Currently I am analyzing Mate and my first impressions are VERY good. I love the way it uses IoC and the completely decoupled view from the controller. It is by far the least intrusive framework I have seen.

I highly recommend taking a look at this presentation of Mate:

Yes, I know. There exist no silver bullet technology/framework that will solve all our problems in a easy, agile, scalable, maintainable and just downright perfect way. But for now Grails is for me “”The search is over”.

More than the “coding by convention”, MVC framework, etc., the important arguments for me:
- open-source
- based on Java
- scaffolding for rapid development
- easily integration with both Hibernate and Spring
- integration with Flex (through REST or Blazeds/Livecycle)

So, my first Grails application is almost done and will be featured shortly..

P.S. The search is only over until the next breakthrough in rapid web development framework appears..

In the last weeks I have been studying a lot of the latest frameworks and technologies for rapid web development, while staying close to the technologies I command and like.

After a couple of days I was swimming in a number of different things I wanted to learn, or at least get up to date with. To avoid drowning I needed an overview and to start focusing. So I started laying out the things I wanted to master, trying to make sure I covered the areas I wanted to cover:

Front-end: Flash/Flex, HTML and AJAX
Back-end: Java, PHP

Basically, PHP is a scripting language that I have come to like, for the easy rapid development. But I also need Java for serious applications and proper organized solutions.

Anyways, I came up with the following diagram (obviously subject to change).

1. Install Flash debug player

2. Edit mm.cfg

For example:

ErrorReportingEnable=1
TraceOutputFileEnable=1
MaxWarnings=500

TraceOutputFileName=Users:Macintosh HD:kimhansen:Desktop:flashlog.txt

(Note: the traceOutputFileName doesn’t work for me..yet)

So I use:

tail -f /Users/kimhansen/Library/Preferences/Macromedia/Flash\ Player/Logs/flashlog.txt

which works

Well, I have just finished implementing a relatively big project using PureMVC and now Adobe launches full support for Cairngorm.

I guess I jumped on the wrong horse, as there now are advantages with Cairngorm over PureMVC that are too strong:

Investment for the future - companies will look for Cairngorm developers, not PureMVC developers.

Full support from Adobe, means a flood of tutorials, serious testing of framework, big real life implementations, etc. etc.

Having started learning Flex the last couple of weeks, I am impressed by the sheer amount of information available.

I will keep a list of the most useful things for my own reference here:

Adobe Developer Connection

Adobe video training

Flex.org

Flex Examples

Adobe Labs - Flex

FlexUnit

Flex 3 Style Explorer