Aral Balkan

Four new Flex 2 Quick Starts are now live on the Adobe Developer Center. They are:

• Building components in MXML
• Building components in ActionScript
• Building components using code behind
• Deploying components

My Quick Start on Building components using code behind is especially worth a read as the Flex documentation currently does not include any information on how to use this important workflow. Those of you who already use the Arp framework to develop your Flash, Flex 1.5 and Flex 2 applications will be familiar with the workflow already. Code behind will also be familiar to users coming from Visual Studio.

The current implementation of code behind in Flex 2 is still somewhat barebones (it was added in Beta 3) and has certain limitations (for example, you can only declare components in your MXML as public in your code behind class) but it nevertheless opens the way for a more robust implementation in the future. Hopefully one that will utilize partial classes.

Comments

• Good timing! We're having a discussion about code and layout separation and code behind development on one of my blog posts right now.

  by Josh Tynjala on 2006-08-15 18:21:20

• Thanks for the great artcile man, i had been looking for this.

  by julien on 2006-08-15 18:56:11

• [...] I read great articles today, written by Aral Balkan that shows once again how easy it is to work with the Flex framework. In these artciles, Aral explain how you can create and deploy your own “custom” but especially reusable components. If you’ve never tried to create you first mxml component, i suggest you to have fun reading this right now . You’ll find the links to these 4 articles in Aral’s post. August 15, 2006 | In Programming | [...]

  by punkblog » Building components with AS3/MXML on 2006-08-15 21:21:33

• So glad to hear that you guys are finding them useful :)

  by aral on 2006-08-16 08:01:02

• Flex Quick Starts: Building custom components... Aral Balkan escribe una serie de tutoriales básicos sobre creación de componentes con Flex2. Desde la creación y utilización con MXML y AS hasta el empaquetado a SWC. Enlace a los tutoriales: * Building components in MXML * Building components......

  by Joan | Garnet on 2006-08-16 14:59:46

• What about application states and transitions with code behind workflow?

  by olegs on 2006-08-17 12:23:38

• Hi Olegs, It's the same workflow when using transitions and application states. Depending on how much of a purist you are, you may see difining transitions and application states in MXML as ugly (if you view the MXML as purely being for the definition of the UI.) Even if you do, however, you can easily define them in ActionScript in Flex 2. Personally, in Flex 2, I believe that if you are consistent (ie., if you always define your transitions, states, etc. in either MXML or ActionScript) then either method is fine.

  by aral on 2006-08-18 10:17:12

• Aral, apologies for the basic question, but what files do I need to download from the SVN repository to start with ARP?

  by Neil on 2006-08-25 11:40:12

• Dear Aral, thanks a bunch for the nice starting points towards Flex 2 and AS3. Concerning the 'code behind' method to inject life into components i ran across a funny thing. Flex always creates me two custom components for the supposably same class/mxml file. I dont get it ? where is my mistake ? I specify the mxml root tag as the class name with the package of the class as the custom tag namespace and instantiate the the Component per actionscript inside the Application Container, actually pretty simple... dah :) Inside the components panel I have two custom components named LoginView though... °°blub What do I do wrong ?

  by amir on 2006-09-26 11:21:20

• Hi Amir, I'm not sure I understand the problem. If you can you send me a simple Flex Builder project that isolates this issue, I'll take a look at it.

  by aral on 2006-09-26 18:13:12

• Hi Aral, my mistake, already found out what the problem was. I was simply trying to add MXML Components dynamically with actionscript -> and that doesnt work at least not without building a full fletched AS3 component. And then I found out about Runtime SharedLibraries .... :) http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flex/articles/rsl_print.html Thanx a bunch for your quick reply and your willingness to help :) have a nice night Amir

  by amir on 2006-09-28 22:25:53

• Hi, I am curious to know about how to place your components some where so that they will appear in the component panel of flex IDE for all projects. Do you have some idea?

  by newtonflash on 2008-04-16 09:19:00

• The style of writing is very familiar to me. Have you written guest posts for other blogs?

  by How to Get Six Pack Fast on 2009-04-15 13:53:18