Mischa Kölliker. JavaLounge Zürich, 23. Juni 2009

Transcription

1 Mischa Kölliker Ueli Kistler JavaLounge Zürich, 23. Juni 2009 Basel Baden Bern Brugg Lausanne Zürich Düsseldorf Frankfurt/M. Freiburg i. Br. Hamburg München Stuttgart Wien

2 & The RIA space What is Adobe Flex? Integration with Grails Daten sind immer im Spiel. 2

3 RIA framework requirements I Allow to develop rich functional GUIs Rapid prototyping Platform support Internationalization Have lots of available components Controls Layouting Data binding Services For the designers among us CSS- or theme suppport Embedding assets (images, movies, sounds, etc.) 3

4 RIA framework requirements II Backend connectivity Web Services (REST and SOAP) Remoting Marshalling / Unmarshalling Security / Sessions Development environment GUI-builder Code completion Refactoring Debugging Unit testing 4

5 There are 3 main RIA frameworks Adobe Flex SDK Flash for software developers MXML and ActionScript 3.0 Runtime: Flash player / AIR Microsoft Silverlight The answer to Flex from Microsoft XAML and.net Runtime: Silverlight plugin Java FX Sun s Oracle s RIA platform Java FX Script Runtime: Java 6 platforms and JavaME Some server-centric frameworks around ZK, Google Web Toolkit 5

6 Flex is mature! 6

7 & The RIA space What is Adobe Flex? Integration with Grails Daten sind immer im Spiel. 7

8 What is Adobe Flex? 8

9 The Adobe Flex stack Flex application Flash player Any browser AIR Any OS 9

10 Flex is a comprehensive SDK for UI development The SDK Open-Source and commercial licenses Lots of components Internationalization Compiler and debugger ActionScript 3.0 Based on ECMAScript Excellent XML support MXML Declarative XML description language Compiles into ActionScript code MXML Action Script Flex SDK Remoting with Data Services (Blaze DS & Co.) 10

11 Developing Flex applications 11

12 Declare with MXML, code with Actionscript 12

13 Flex is flexible! Object-oriented development and scripting Very efficient GUI development thanks to MXML GUI design is easily modifed Adjust properties Create or extend components Lots of available components ~70 standard components, some with commercial license Most components are open sourced (SDK and e.g. FlexLib, BirdEye) Event-based Decoupled code Components throw and handle plenty of events Create, throw and catch custom events is simple 13

14 Productivity boosters MXML for declarative development Powerful components and libraries View states Data binding E4X Support Webservice integration and remoting 14

15 See your application from a different angle Components can have multiple view states States can be extended Only delta to the parent state is stored Great for. Role-based UI development Multi-step wizards Context-sensitive views 15

16 Data binding eases data interaction MXML and curly bracket syntax BindingUtils or declaratively with mx:binding tag PropertyChangeEvent will be dispatched only on real changes Unidirectional yet 16

17 E4X - Flex provides excellent XML support ECMAScript for XML (E4X) standard built-in in ActionScript 17

18 E4X und XPath Query XML with Xpath expressions in action 18

19 Webservices integration and remoting HTTPService component for RESTful Web Services XML JSON Hessian binary protocol WebService component SOAP Webservices RemoteObject for Java Remoting ActionScript Message Format (AMF) Binary protocol LifeCycle Data Services / BlazeDS is open-source 19

20 & The RIA space What is Adobe Flex? Integration with Grails Daten sind immer im Spiel. 20

21 Hu? Grails? Rapid web application development framework Groovy & Java-based Full-stack environment Built on Spring, Hibernate Modular and extensible Acquired by SpringSource in 2008 Groovy Hibernate Spring 21

22 Integraing with Grails What is needed? Grails A service-like construct Publish the service Flex A service connector A GUI to show and modify data 22

23 Interaction between Flex and Grails GUI / Flex Display XML in DataGrid control Edit with Flex edit-controls Mark modified XML elements Hit Save XML XML Server / Grails generate XML list; add Primary Key as id attribute Implicitely parse XML Take action (update, create, delete) according to XML marks 23

24 Grails REST Controller Marshalling by convention Render result Parse request 24

25 Advanced Marshalling with Grails Groovy DSL (Builder pattern) builder -> builder.person() builder.name(p.name) methodmissing(string name, args) <person> <name>.</name> <vorname>.</vorname> <person> Template engine for even higher performance Groovy, Apache Velocity, etc. 25

26 Make the REST service available REST URL Mapping 26

27 How to use REST Web Services from Flex Declaration of the service to be called in MXML Call the service, optionally with parameters Bind result data or handle the answer using ActionScript 27

28 The Flex GUI Show and Edit XML 28

29 Some RESTrictions Browser plugin design limitation: Only GET and POST possible Microsoft Silverlight e.g. suffers of this limitation as well Possible solutions: Call alternative URL e.g. /animal/save/123 Use BlazeDS as Proxy (useproxy= true ) Pure ActionScript using as3httpclientlib HTTPS support with additional AS3 library HTTP Header X-Method-Override Grails feature request for Official Silverlight solution 29

30 Comprehensive example XML-parsing Convenience functions including data binding Parse XML with XmlSlurper (Groovy class) request.xml + GPath (similiar to E4X) def xml = request.xml xml.people.each { p ->. } Grails parses flat XML-structure into a map automatically 30

31 Integration Handle changes Type: NodeChild 31

32 Groovy Metaclass in Action Prototyping with Groovy Extend existing classes with methods or properties 32

33 A few words on Flex Remoting Remoting layer for Java and PHP available BlazeDS Java Remoting and Web Messaging Server-push via HTTP Performance thanks to binary AMF protocol GraniteDS Integration with Java frameworks Lazy-loading support for Hibernate EJB3, Spring (and Spring Security), JBoss Seam, Flex client has to implement Remote-objects GraniteDS contains code generator for Java classes Grails Plugins for BlazeDS and GraniteDS available 33

34 & The RIA space What is Adobe Flex? Integration with Grails Daten sind immer im Spiel. To sum it up 34

35 Why Grails & Flex I Grails Convention over Configuration Groovy and Java as programming language Plugin architecture GORM for Domain modelling Based on Spring / great extendability Unit/Integration testing Adobe Flex Design GUIs with IDE support Databinding / E4X Open-source code helps if documentation is incomplete Way better than Java FX Creating advanced GUIs is fun! 35

36 Why Grails & Flex II & REST for free No upfront code generation necessary Highly dynamic server and client Rapid results Rapid changes Supports agile requirements management Fun to use 36

37 Thank you! &? Basel Baden Bern Brugg Lausanne Zürich Düsseldorf Frankfurt/M. Freiburg i. Br. Hamburg München Stuttgart Wien

38 Tools Adobe Flex Builder is based on Eclipse IDE Adobe Flex Builder Eclipse IDE Plugin Designer Add components by drag&drop Very good integration with MXML Code completion Refactoring (only rename ) Debugger / Profiler Requires debug version of Flash player Catch and display trace output Standard: $249 Professional: $599 38

39 Tools IntelliJ is hot on FB s heels Editor with ActionScript and MXML support Debugger But no profiler IntelliJ is the first version with really usable Flex support No GUI-Builder Personal: $249 Commercial: $599 39

40 Flex 4 aka Gumbo Design in mind, enabled by tools Flash Catalyst & Builder Theme-support Developer productivity Paging concept Two-way databinding } Namespaces for components, declarations Wizards (Integrate web services, binding ) FXG workflow SVG-like vector graphics Built by a designer, transformed to an application 40