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Have you made the upgrade yet?

You can download the new version of Flash from here: http://www.adobe.com/go/getflashplayer.

Alright i am one of those who haven’t. I am looking forward to this upgrade though. With the new FileReference implementation, now i should be able to send Byte Data to my BlazeDS service. Yes FileUpload with BlazeDS should be possible now. I shall try it out this weekend and share.

I have made a simple Flex news ticker(those marquee looking news often seen in CNN). It picks up content from an RSS feed. Check it out!

Read the rest of this entry »

Just in case someone faced the same problem i did. Here’s the actual code to download a file with Flex


var fileToDownload:FileReference = new FileReference();
private function downloadFile(event:MouseEvent):void
{
var request:URLRequest = new URLRequest("file.txt");
fileToDownload.download(request, "aSpecificFilenameChosenByYou.txt");
}

It doesn’t work if your file reference object is declared as a local variable. For the non-coders, here is the negative example.

private function downloadFile(event:MouseEvent):void
{
var request:URLRequest = new URLRequest("file.txt");
var fileToDownload:FileReference = new FileReference();
fileToDownload.download(request, "aSpecificFilenameChosenByYou.txt");
}

Today, there is only one API for creating production grade front end for RIA talking to Java. It’s called Adobe Flex. In 2010, JavaFX may become another alternative. But meanwhile, please stop bashing Java. Do not forget that many of these new popular programming languages exist because there is a J2EE application they need to connect to. Do not forget that Java puts bread on the tables of many people (including mine) around the world. Do not spit in the well you drink from.

Yakov Fain from Farata Systems » Flex is strong because of Java.

I can feel so much from what Yakov has written. I totally agree with him. Coming from an enterprise world, it is really where the big money pot is. No offense to the other languages, you can laugh all you want about Java but you are missing out on the potential Java can give to a Flex application. I am still a little skeptical about JavaFX. Let’s see what Sun can do with JavaFX.

I have package my slides and source codes. Click here if you wish to download it.

Something that i was unable to share with everyone. I have used BlazeDS with Spring and Hibernate. For my Flex client, i have used Flex with Cairngorm.

Have a look at the codes…

Drop me a msg if you have trouble setting the source codes up. You can tweet me @kennethteo.

Cairngorm is the lightweight micro-architecture for Rich Internet Applications built in Flex or AIR. A collaboration of recognized design patterns, Cairngorm exemplifies and encourages best-practices for RIA development advocated by Adobe Consulting, encourages best-practice leverage of the underlying Flex framework, while making it easier for medium to large teams of software engineers deliver medium to large scale, mission-critical Rich Internet Applications.

Cairngorm Project Home at Adobe Open Source

Great news to the Flex community that Cairngorm is now open-sourced. I can only hope for more great things to come. Having completed my first project using Cairngorm, i would certainly recommend it to anyone who is using Flex in their projects.

Between January 2008 and July 2008, my company has released 4 customised sites running our real-time booking engine for the following Golf courses.

• Keppel Club
• Sembawang Country Club
• Sentosa Golf Club
• The Legends Golf & Country Resort

More info can be found at our corporate blog, The Clubhouse

Now, we are excited to welcome all local golfers to our new online golf booking portal, Clickateeonline.com. Not only do we bring you real-time golf booking. We have added 9 more course for your golfing desires.

We bring you quantity. Now let me share what we have in mind to bring some quality to your golfing pleasures. Let me navigate you through the site a lil.

Welcome Screen

Entering the site, you will see chiclet-looking buttons which represent each green fees for each session on a course. Clicking any of the chiclets will bring you to our booking page. Fill in the particulars of yourself and your other players, credit card payment information and your preferred tee-time and Click Reserve. Easy Peasy.

My Game

Once you have made a booking, you will be able to see your booking information by logging in to ‘My Game’. ‘My Game’ page also allows you to edit the names of your other plays. If you are unable to play your game, you can cancel it but note that we have a cancellation policy and charges do apply.

Courses

You can get a quick overview of the courses on the main page itself.  To see more details, click on Courses. You will get to see interactive hole-by-hole photos and tips on how to play each hole.

My Score

My Stats

My Score - a personal score repository that let you submit your scores online. Once done, you can use our interactive charts at My Stats that help you track your performance over time, with callouts of specific scorecards and score breakdown.

To really experience everything, all you have to do now is click here. But WAIT! before you do, I have to say that all these was made possible with Flex.

Here’s a video about customising your own skin for your Flex controls. Simply cool! This feature is certainly something i am looking forward to.

I am excited to share this piece of news.

The Singapore Flex User Group is organising The Actionscript Conference on 19 October 2008 at the National Library. Expect lots of exciting things at this conference. Peter Elst is one of the invited key speakers.

The Actionscript Conference is a community conference with the focus on Flash Platform. Attendents will see themselves immersed in a day of learning, knowledge exchange, and networking. TAC aims to bring topics on Actionscript 3.0, Flash development, Enterprise Flex, AIR, Integrating of Flash and other Platforms, and building Rich Internet Application to its audience.

The Actionscript Conference is organised by the Singapore Flex Usergroup. We aim to create a conference for the developers, by the developers.

Since this is a non-profit event, as part of the organising committee, i cordially invite you to join us as a sponsor(Sponsorship details). If you wish to offer your knowledge to this conference, it is much appreciated as we try to make this a successful event.

I am observing pretty bad performance when my BlazeDS services are configured with Apache and Tomcat on mod_jk. Not too sure whether it is because i used Cairngorm as my main application framework. Setting requestTimeouts on my remoteObjects didn’t help. It was until i tried hitting my BlazeDS endpoint directly with my browser that i realised it was Apache that had refused/restricted requests to my Tomcat.

Error message from Apache

What i see on the Apache Error log

Tue Jul 22 18:51:59 2008] [error] [client <ip address>] client denied by server configuration: amfsecure, referer: <url to my flex app>

but i do not see any request with the same timestamp on the Tomcat logs.

Performing tuning is the only way to go. However, my sys admin did hardened and tuned the mod_jk connector settings in the server.xml files. Still waiting for him to try to worker.properties file. Sys Administration is not my kind of work. =p

My guess is that unless you are expecting very low traffic, you should not use the mod_jk setup. I hope my sys admin ain’t gonna get hell from me to ask for a public-facing Tomcat. I sent a message onto the BlazeDS jira below to see if there is any advice on my situation.

References:

• http://bugs.adobe.com/jira/browse/BLZ-84
• http://www.solutionhacker.com/2008/05/29/tomcat-performance-tuning/