flex360 milan 2008 - flex & webservices

Copyright 2008 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Flex 3 & Webservices

Cristian Ivascu :: Adobe360 Flex, Milan08 – APR - 2008

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Agenda

Introduction to Flex and web services Building a SOAP-based app REST services Building a del.icio.us based app Q&A

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One server, multiple, disparate clients

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What are webservices?

Practice matters!

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W3C says: “a software system designed to support interoperable Machine to Machine interaction over a network” (W3C)

In practice:web apis that are accessed remotely


Web services – which one?

SOAP & WSDL Machine usable Verbose Enterprise

REST Light-weight No encoding popular!

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Flex and Webservices

Flex creates rich clients; Web services bring data to the client Flex works with web services in an easy

manner

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WSDL sample - VideoSearch

• Only one operation• Simple request parameters• Slightly complex response

• Link: http://localhost/video.wsdl

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http://localhost/video.wsdl

Copyright 2008 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved. 8

How to access the service?

At runtime At development time (via tool support)


Runtime Demo

Let’s see it in the Builder!


When to use it• Dynamic scenarios• Discovery of services at run-time• Services that may change more often

Characteristics• Not tied to a particular implementation• Very flexible• Adapts easily to changes, without messing with the code

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What about this?

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Dev-time way

Why?• For the more static scenarios – build and forget• For increased productivity• To make it easier

How?• Added classes to model the wsdl contents• Added a way to link types in wsdl to AS classes• Tool support & code generation

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Video Search Demo redone

The same Video Searching app re-done to take advantage of the new features.,

Let’s see how it’s made.


Generated code – is this spaghetti?

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How to find and fix problems

Check if the schema is there Breakpoints in call() and processResult() Check type mappings & wsdl type

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Known issues with the generated code

We don’t support everything – only WS-I 1.0 profile; wsdl 1.0 & soap 1.1

Known issues – there are a few Have one? Report it @ bugs.adobe.com/flex

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REST

Can use multiple output formats – XML, JSON, etc

Is very light-weight Pro: performance Con: there is no typing info!

Is very popular

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Flex & Rest services

They haven’t change much AS allows manipulation of XML and binding to objects But there’s a catch – httpservice.xmlDecode() + a custom

model

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DEMO – del.icio.us API usage

xmlDecode to convert raw xml into an array of “Post.as” instances

There is also a more generic approach – using SimpleXMLDecoder & ObjectTranslator

http://booleanbetrayal.com/2007/05/18/httpservice-xmldecode-objecttranslator-and-rabidsquirrels/

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Flex | Final words of wisdom

Web services are a way of getting data into your Flex app; When building rich clients you need to use them Web services in Flex can be better; for suggestions or bugs

visit: bugs.adobe.com/flex

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Q & A

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• Flex can cope with both dynamic and strong-typed web service usage.• The wizard only generates some code for you. Tweak it!• Strong types are not for WSDL only. Use XMLDecode() .

This is (almost) the last slide

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Go play!

http://adobe.com/go/flex

…and off to lunch! Buon appetito!

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http://adobe.com/go/flex

flex360 milan 2008 - flex & webservices

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