Posts Tagged flex builder
Unable to export SWC oem
Posted by admin in actionscript, flash builder, flex on April 7th, 2010
Been switching environments a bit lately from Flash Builder to Flex Builder and back and using different SDKs.
When importing a new project that someone had checked in from a different version, the .flexLibProperties file was causing this issue.
After much scouring, I found something that worked.
Open .flexLibProperties and find the section <includeResource/>. Remove everything in that section.
Made the problem disappear.
Headless Flex Builds on EC2 Using Hudson Against Remote SVN Repo on Assembla with FlexPMD
Posted by admin in assembla, data visualization, ec2, flex, flex builder, flexpmd, hudson, svn, tomcat on November 16th, 2009
We’re doing a current project requiring continuous integration. We also maintain the SVN repo. There’s a lot here and you may/may not need all the pieces. We’re specifically doing headless Flex/DataViz Builds on Amazon EC2 Ubuntu with Hudson against a remote SVN repo on Assembla and have thrown in FlexPMD to see what it can add to our process.
First, some stuff I’ll assume you already have and know how to work with:
- EC2 machine running in the Amazon cloud. We’re using one of the Ubuntu disty’s. I’m going to assume you have all the necessary ports open for things like email and such.
- Hudson. We’re using version 1.326. We’ve used other CI tools but find Hudson to be very user friendly. You’ll need to have a servlet container ie Tomcat and you just pop hudson.war in and you’re ready to rock.
- Remote SVN. You can be using a local one, but. We’re using Assembla since it’s got all the stuff we need to do business in one place and it’s simple to use. Time is money.
- Java installed on your server. We’re using version 1.6.0_07
Stuff you’ll end up downloading/installing/configuring:
- Flex SDK
- Flex Dataviz components
- SVN client
- Ant
- Flex Ant
Step 1, Flex
We’re currently building with the latest stable build of Flex 3.4. Get yourself all logged into your EC2 account and let’s roll. I create a flex/3.4 directory and cd to that directory and then get the latest Flex rev. This is the latest URL:
wget http://download.macromedia.com/pub/flex/sdk/flex_sdk_3.4.zip
Let’s get the dataviz components as well since they’re a separate install
wget http://download.macromedia.com/pub/flex/sdk/datavisualization_sdk_3.4.zip
Oh yeah, and if you’re going to be doing unit testing, might as well get that sucker as well
wget http://download.macromedia.com/pub/flex/sdk/automation_sdk_3.4.zip
Great, so we have all the pieces we need so far. You’ll want to unzip and cp these to wherever you keep your software installs on the server. I’m no unix guru, but, near as I could find out, the common location is /opt.
So, create a /opt/flex directory and unzip the flex_sdk_3.4.zip files there. Then, copy the dataviz zip there and unzip it.
cp datavisualization_sdk3.4.zip /opt/flex
cd /opt/flex
unzip datavisualization_sdk3.4.zip
This will extract the following into the SDK 3 installation
- datavisualization.swc into the frameworkslibs folder
- datavisualization__3.0.9147.swz and datavisualization__3.0.9147.swf into the frameworksrsls folder
- datavisualization_rb.swc into the appropriate frameworkslocale<locale> folder
Let’s make sure we put the Flex compiler on the class path. On our server, the default shell is bash. You’re setup may be different, but essentially, you want to find the properties file for you shell (I’m using /root/.bashrc) and add the following line to the bottom of it:
export PATH=/opt/flex/bin:$PATH
Now let’s test it. You may need to log out and then back into your shell. At the command prompt, enter mxmlc and hit return. You should see something like
Loading configuration file /opt/flex/frameworks/flex-config.xml
Error: a target file must be specified
That’s a good error. It means that the Flex compiler is now accessible on your system. If nothing comes back, you’re just at the command prompt, you may not be using the right shell properties file.
In order to build projects that use the dataviz components without having the watermark on your charts and graphs, you’ll need to apply a Flex license to the installation. You do this in the flex-config.xml file located in /opt/flex/frameworks. Towards the bottom of the file you’ll see some commented out xml for doing so:
<licenses>
<license>
<product>string</product>
<serial-number>number</serial-number>
</license>
</licenses>
Step 2, SVN
We are accessing an SVN repo on our Assembla account. The easiest way to make this happen from the EC2 is to just install SVN. So, from the command prompt:
apt-get install subversion
If you run into any errors, I always find it helpful to refresh the list:
apt-get update
If all went well, you should be able to log into your remote repo:
svn –username <your_username> –password <your_password> –no-auth-cache checkout <some_project_name>
If successful, you’re going to have a checked out version of some_project_name in your current directory.
Step 3, Ant
We’re going to be using Ant as our build process. It will called via a Hudson job. Let’s get and install Ant.
apt-get install ant
Once that completes, you should be able to type ant at a command prompt. If it installed successfully, you should see something similar to (unless there happens to be a build.xml file in your current directory):
Buildfile: build.xml
BUILD FAILED
This is good. We now have Ant installed. The only other Ant specific thing we’ll need to do is copy the FlexTasks.jar from your Flex SDK into your new Ant install.
Let’s find where Ant was installed. At a command prompt:
which ant
(which will most likely return)
/usr/bin/ant
Now, navigate to your Flex SDK Ant lib directory. The Flex SDK now contains the flexTasks.jar we need.
cd /opt/flex/an/lib
Now just copy this to the location of your Ant install’s lib directory (typical):
cp flexTasks.jar /usr/share/ant/lib
If you do not copy this file to the lib directory, you must specify it by using Ant’s -lib
option on the command line when you make a project.
Step 4, Setup Hudson Job
Plugins
I’m assuming you have a working familiarity with Hudson. If not, there’s a ton of info via your install directly and on the web. We have a few extra plugins installed. The Violations plugin is useful for code analysis via PMD files if you structure your ant files to use it. The Email Extension gives you a bit more flexibility than the basic email tool.
Configuration
Here’s a look at few items we needed in the Hudon configuration page to get things to work smoothly
Specify the Ant location on your server.
For the Extended E-mail Notification plugin. We’ve defined an email account on our system called hudson. We also use gmail for our corporate email. We’re essentially relaying to gmail which requires SMTP auth and SSL (note: we haven’t entered anything in the default Hudson E-mail section):
Job Setup
Go the usual steps of creating a new job. Here are the pertinent parts.
In Source Code Management, we’ll need to point to our remote SVN. When you click on the “?” next to the Repository URL, you will see the grey box and be able to provide login credentials to your SVN repo and test the connection:
We’re not going to specify any build triggers. The reason is that Assembla gives the ability to access the post-commit hook in SVN via their “Webhook” plugin. In that tool, all we have to do is specify the Hudson job URL and with each check in of code, the project is checked out, built, and success/failure notification sent to our dev group. This is the key to the ‘continuous integration’ aspect of this whole setup.
We do need to tell Hudson to use Ant to do the builds. We have a target in the build.xml file (that is in the root of our Flex project) called main.hudson. To be on the safe side, I’ve specified the full path to the build file. We specify the ant install we configured in the Hudson configuration page earlier. It would probably be helpful to give it more meaningful name like ‘ant_version_x’.
FlexPMD is another great tool we use that profiles your code based upon a bunch of best practices defined by the Flex group at Adobe. You can also specify your own criteria to use in the analysis. It’s worth checking out. Note the format of the XML filename pattern used. It took a while to figure that part out!
We configure the Editable Email Notification accordingly:
And that’s pretty much it. I’ll be pushing up a blog shortly that will walk through the whole ant build used for this project. It uses modules, all sorts of RSLs, FTP, and so on.
Happy Flexing.
Setting Flex Default Background Color :: Ant MXMLC + FlexBuilder + SWF MetaData :: UPDATED
I always forget this one so I decided to post it…wanna remove the default blue-gray background from your flex apps and make it the same color as your actual application?
Just put in the -default-background-color compiler switch and provide a hex color — I use white in the following example.
(Thanks for SWF MetaData reminder Ben: Return Undefined and soon migrating to Ben-Clinkenbeard-dot-com)
Ant MXMLC
<mxmlc>
...
<default-background-color>0xFFFFFF</default-background-color>
....
</mxmlc>
Flex Builder -> Project Properties -> Compiler Options -> Additional compiler arguments:
-default-background-color #FFFFFF
SWF MetaData
[SWF( backgroundColor="#FFFFFF" )]
Centering the Label Vertically in a FormItem
So you’re coding up some form items and the glorious designer is showing the label for the form item centered vertically, or, at the bottom.
Piece of cake says I and I start to look for the props to do so. Lo and behold, they don’t exist. WTF??
Google this and google that and no luck!!
Great, now what do I do?
Well, it’s kinda hacky, but it works.
I call this function on the creationComplete event of the FormItem:
private function centerLabel(evt:FlexEvent):void
{
var fi:FormItem = FormItem(evt.currentTarget) as FormItem;
var lbl:Label = fi.itemLabel as Label;
lbl.move( lbl.x, lbl.y + (lbl.height/2) );
}
Enjoy
Convert Plain-Old Flex Project to Java Server Based Project
Posted by brianr in eclipse, flex builder, java on May 28th, 2009
Ever start a project as a plain-old Flex project that doesn’t use a Java server and then later want to convert it? You’d think you could do this simply by examing the project’s server properties (Project -> Properties -> Flex Server) and adding a server…but no…you can’t…ehhh…not to fret, there’s still hope…don’t create a new project from scratch just yet and copy all your old projects files into your new project. We just need to modify a couple of the project’s .files and we’re good to go.
Modify the Project Property Files
Since we started our Flex project as a non-server based project, we’ll need to make some modifications to our .project, .actionScriptProperties, and .flexProperties files in order to convert the project to a server-based application. These files all exist under the root of the Flex Project’s directory — if you can’t see them, make sure you’re in either the Flex or Flex Debugging Perspective.
As a side note, under the covers we’re modifying the Flex Project’s Properties as if we right-clicked on the project and selected Properties.
NOTE: The following examples use a @@key@@ to indicate where you should substitute your own project, workspace, and server settings.
NOTE: This also assumes that you’re building your flex project to a directory in your Java project called flex — you don’t need to create it in WebContent on the Java side, as it’s generated by Flex Builder when you do a build or clean.
.actionScriptProperties
Open up .actionScriptProperties and locate the <compiler> node and add or change the following attributes to look like this:
- outputFolderLocation=”DOCUMENTS/@@JavaProjectName@@/WebContent/flex”
- rootURL=”http://@@Host@@:@@Port@@/@@JavaAppContext@@/flex”
Your .actionScriptProperties should look like this:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<actionScriptProperties
mainApplicationPath="@@MyFlexApp@@.mxml"
version="3">
<compiler
additionalCompilerArguments="-locale en_US
-use-network=false"
copyDependentFiles="true"
enableModuleDebug="true"
generateAccessible="false"
htmlExpressInstall="true"
htmlGenerate="true"
htmlHistoryManagement="true"
htmlPlayerVersion="9.0.124"
htmlPlayerVersionCheck="true"
outputFolderLocation=
"DOCUMENTS/@@JavaProjectName@@/WebContent/flex"
outputFolderPath="bin-debug"
rootURL="http://@@Host@@:@@Port@@/@@JavaAppContext@@/flex"
sourceFolderPath="src"
strict="true"
useApolloConfig="false"
verifyDigests="true"
warn="true">
<compilerSourcePath/>
<libraryPath defaultLinkType="1">
<libraryPathEntry kind="4" path=""/>
<libraryPathEntry kind="1" linkType="1" path="libs"/>
</libraryPath>
<sourceAttachmentPath/>
</compiler>
<applications>
<application path="@@MyFlexApp@@.mxml"/>
</applications>
<modules/>
<buildCSSFiles/>
</actionScriptProperties>
.flexProperties
Open up .flexProperties and locate the <flexProperties> node and add or change the following attributes to look like this:
- flexServerType=”2″
- serverContextRoot=”/@@JavaAppContext@@”
- serverRoot=”${DOCUMENTS}/@@JavaProjectName@@/WebContent”
- serverRootURL=”http://@@Host@@:@@Port@@/@@JavaAppContext@@/”
Your .flexProperties should look like this:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<flexProperties
flexServerType="2"
serverContextRoot="/@@JavaAppContext@@"
serverRoot="${DOCUMENTS}/@@JavaProjectName@@/WebContent"
serverRootURL="http://@@Host@@:@@Port@@/@@JavaAppContext@@/"
toolCompile="true"
useServerFlexSDK="false"
version="1"/>
.project
Open up .project and locate the <projectDescription> node and add the node <linkedResources> after the <natures> node inside <projectDescription> — simply copy and paste the <linkedResources> node from my code snippet below; your .project file should look like this:
NOTE: You need to put the full, absolute path on your machine to your Java Web Project in place of the @@FULL_PATH@@ key I subsituted down below for the path on my machine.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<projectDescription>
<name>EmployeeManagementConsole4</name>
<comment></comment>
<projects>
</projects>
<buildSpec>
<buildCommand>
<name>com.adobe.flexbuilder.project.flexbuilder</name>
<arguments>
</arguments>
</buildCommand>
</buildSpec>
<natures>
<nature>com.adobe.flexbuilder.project.flexnature</nature>
<nature>com.adobe.flexbuilder.project.actionscriptnature</nature>
</natures>
<linkedResources>
<link>
<name>bin-debug</name>
<type>2</type>
<location>
@@FULL_PATH@@/@@JavaProjectName@@/WebContent/flex
</location>
</link>
</linkedResources>
</projectDescription>
Check Flex Project Properties
Just to make sure we did everything correctly, let’s check the project properties by right-click on our Flex Project and selecting Properties -> Flex Build Path. It should look like this:
NOTE: The screen shots have my actual project, workspace, and server settings — these should help solidify the entire tutorial. They are from Part 4 of my Stack Tutorial Series.
- Main source folder: src
- Output folder: ${DOCUMENTS}/@@JavaProjectName@@/WebContent/flex
- Output folder URL: http://@@Host@@:@@Port@@/@@JavaAppContext@@/flex
Build Path Properties
Next let’s check the Flex Server Settings: Project Properties -> Flex Server:
- Root folder: ${DOCUMENTS}/@@JavaProjectName@@/WebContent
- Root URL: http://@@Host@@:@@Port@@/@@JavaAppContext@@/
- Context root: /@@JavaAppContext@@
Server Properties
Finished!
Dealing with @Embed Tags, Ant Builds, and Paths to Resources
There’s plenty of evidence on the blogs, Adobe bugs, and elsewhere, that there are issues dealing with the compiler locating resources at compile time.
You ask yourself, where do I put my assets, my images, my CSS files?
Using one notation, Flex Builder will find the resources but switching to Ant causes all hell to break loose.
Here’s a simple and fairly elegant way to deal with it.
There are two things you need to know to understand what’s going on.
- The forward slash(/) operator is used to indicate the root. But what is root? The Flex compiler considers the ‘main source folder’ to be the root. Hence when you say ‘/’, you are actually referring to the ‘Main source folder’ (which you can set in Project>Properties>Flex Build Path>Main source folder), which in most cases would be set as the ’src’ folder.
- How to traverse a path. Pretty simple. If you do something like [Embed(source="/../assets/images/icon.jpg")] and src is your main source folder, the compiler will start at src, go up one level, find the assets folder and voila!