It’s been a couple of years since I worked with ColdFusion and Flex together, but I remember I always like the combination and chose it for my new little Xuland social networking project I’ve been working on (see previous posts).

I had to remember how the whole Flex-ColdFusion remoting setup would work again and I had to overcome a couple of hurdles. I thought I’d share the experience as it would have helped me get up to speed quickly.

Here’s a quick recap of setting up your Flex application to remote to ColdFusion:

1. Install ColdFusion (I installed mine to the default C:\ColdFusion9 directory)
2. In FlexBuilder, create a new Flex project
3. While creating the project, select an Application server type of “ColdFusion” and check the “Use remote object access service” with the “ColdFusion Flash Remoting” option selected.
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4. On the next screen, in my case I’m using a Standalone installation and had to uncheck the “Use default location for local ColdFusion server”. Of course, the root folder was C:\ColdFusion9. I clicked Validate Configuration which validated that the root folder existed.
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5. I happen to use ColdFusion primarily for access to a MySQL datasource, so I had to setup the datasource in the ColdFusion admin first (this information should be readily available anywhere)
6. Once the datasource was setup, I first created a value-object (VO) in ColdFusion to represent the object (in this case, a User) I wanted to pass back to the Flex application
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   UserVO.cfc:

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   <cfcomponent output="false" alias="com.xyz.coldfusion.vo.UserVO"> <cfproperty name="userID" type="numeric"/> <cfproperty name="username" type="string"/> <cfproperty name="password" type="string"/> </cfcomponent>

7. After the VO, I created a data-access object (DAO) to query the datasource for a user and return a UserVO to the calling Flex application
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   <cfcomponent output="yes"> <cffunction name="getUserByID" access="remote" returntype="com.xyz.coldfusion.vo.UserVO">   <cfargument name="userID" type="numeric" required="yes">   <cfquery name="getUser" datasource="xuland"> SELECT * FROM tblUsers WHERE userID = '#userID#' </cfquery>   <cfreturn getUser>   </cffunction> </cfcomponent>

8. Back in the Flex project, I setup my RemoteObject tag to point towards the ColdFusion DAO component I created in the last step:
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   <!-- Remote Services --> <mx:RemoteObject id="userService" destination="ColdFusion" source="com.xyz.coldfusion.dao.UserDAO" showBusyCursor="true">   <mx:method name="getUserByID" result="resultHandler(event)" fault="faultHandler(event)"/>   </mx:RemoteObject>

9. Create your result and fault handlers (here we just display an Alert)
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   <fx:Script> <![CDATA[ import mx.controls.Alert; import mx.rpc.events.FaultEvent; import mx.rpc.events.ResultEvent;   private function resultHandler( event : ResultEvent ) : void { Alert.show( event.result.toString() ); }   private function faultHandler( event : FaultEvent ) : void { Alert.show( event.fault.faultString ); } ]]> </fx:Script>

10. Finally create a button or method to call the service:
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    1	<mx:Button click="userService.getUserByID( 1 )"/>

Much of this logic may be abstracted off into controllers, delegates, commands or other framework-specific components but this is a fairly simple example of installing, configuring and executing a remote object service call from Flex to ColdFusion.

At work, I wanted to review some information on the Adobe Flex 4 LiveDocs help documentation and had a lot of trouble finding it online.

Luckily at some point in the past, I managed to bookmark it at home and am reposting it here in case anyone else might be interested. Here is the link to the Flex 4 help documentation, which is a fantastic resource. I hope it comes in handy

Download the trial copy of Flash Builder 4, read the above documentation and experiment by building your own test applications.

There are quite a few changes from Flex 3 to Flex 4 and the earlier you get acclimated to the new features, the better prepared you’ll be when the final product ships Good luck!

Spent most of the day yesterday at Flex Camp in Orange County and it was probably the best $25 I ever spent (well for a conference anyway).

All of the topics sparked a lot of interest in the crowd of about 100 people packed into a conference room at the Boeing complex in Huntington Beach. The most notable were Evan Gifford’s Flash/Flex showcase and Tom Gonzalez and Juan Sanchez’s Degrafa overview. Thomas Burleson covered “behavior injection” concepts that I would love to steal if I ever get the chance

Here were some pics:

From flexcampoc.com:

Start 2009 off right by beefing up your Flex skills. Flex Camp OC is a full-day event featuring some top industry experts on Adobe Flex and AIR. Come advance your Flex skills and network with local companies and fellow developers. Sessions will be geared towards developers with moderate to advanced level of experience with Flex and/or ActionScript. There will be plenty of giveaways, raffles and swag.

When: Saturday, January 31, 2009
Where:Boeing, Huntington Beach, CA
Price:$25 Admission