Archive for the 'flex' Category

Flex Builder 3, .swc Libraries and Linked Source

I’ve been using Mate for some time and liking it very much. I wanted to be able to use Flex Builder’s ability to navigate to and view the source of included types. With only having the downloaded .swc file in my /libs directory that wasn’t possible. It took me some time to sort it out, so here’s my recipe in case it helps anyone (and so I can remember next time).

This should also work for any project that you can download the source for, that just happened to be Mate for me. I’m using Flex Builder 3 — not sure what would be different if anything with FB2.

1. Download the source using the directions here

2. Create a Flex Library Project in Flex Builder, let’s call it ‘MateLib’

3. Import the source into the project, leaving out all the .svn directories, such that your folder structure looks like:

MateLib
   /bin
   /com
      /asfusion
         /mate
            /etc....
   manifest.xml

4. Right click the project in the FB Navigator view and select: Properties -> Flex Library Compiler. Set the Namespace URL: to “http://mate.asfusion.com/” and Mainifest file: to manifest.xml

5. Save and build the project.

6. In your project that uses the library, select Properties -> Flex Build Path and click Add SWC and navigate to the MateLib project -> /bin folder and select the MateLib.swc file there.

Now you can use the standard way to include Mate components in your mxml, with:

xmlns:mate="http://mate.asfusion.com/"

And you’ll be able to view the source code by command-clicking (control-click on Windows I think) a Mate component. You can also select the text, e.g. Dispatcher, and use the F3 key. And… the classes will also come up and be navigable with the Open Type, command-T, navigator.

FlexBuilder 3 Security Sandbox Explained

I’ve been trying to load a local file with some dummy data and hitting a security warning. I was running out of FlexBuilder 3 and trying to read a local file, so wasn’t sure why I was getting a security error.

I’d come across many references to adding a cross domain policy to a web server, but this is the first full explanation of the security sandbox that made sense to me. Following this, I added:

-use-network=false

To the custom compiler line in the project preferences and all is well. Here’s the link with a great explanation:

http://blogs.adobe.com/flexdoc/2008/06/the_security_sandbox_in_flex_b.html