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Flex and PHP: Building a Message Board – part 2

Welcome to part 2 of this series of two articles on building a simple message board application with Flex. The application uses PHP with a MySQL database. It is a very simple application because the aim is to show you how to use PHP and Flex together rather than how to create a fully functional commercial application.

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Flex and PHP: Building a Message Board – part 1

If you're a Flash developer, you've probably heard of or even worked with Flex. The Flex 2 framework provides a very flexible way to develop SWF applications. You can build simple applications like calculators that don’t use any data from outside sources. You can also build more complex applications that take their content from text or XML documents or even from a database.

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Printing with Flex 2

A common task for developers is providing a way for people to print out the contents of a Flex application. Often, you'll want to print out something that looks different from what's on the screen – maybe a simplified version of the data or the interface. The good news is that you can do this using Flex 2.

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Working with Drag and Drop in Flex Builder 2

One of the really cool things in Flex is the built-in support for drag and drop. Flex includes the Drag and Drop Manager which allows you to drag an object and add it to a component. The DataGrid, HorizontalList, List, Menu, PrintDataGrid, TileList and Tree components all include enhanced support for drag and drop so you don't have to write any code. If you want to drag and drop with other components, you'll need to write some ActionScript.
 

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Using navigation controls in Flex Builder 2

Flex 2 comes with a set of navigation controls that are easy to include in your applications. The navigation controls are useful because they will automatically generate a navigation system based on other elements in your application.

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Flex 2 tips and best practices

Welcome to the last in this series of articles about the Flex 2 framework. If you've been reading the previous articles, you'll have learned about building Flex applications using Flex Builder. We've covered some basics such as styling components as well as more advanced topics like consuming external data and building custom ActionScript classes.

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Debugging applications in Flex Builder 2

The Flex framework is a great approach for building Web applications that run in SWF files. It comes with a set of built-in components that you can extend and use for a variety of purposes. However, what do you do when you can't get your application to work properly? What do those warnings and error messages actually mean and how can you figure out what's causing them? That's the topic for this article – the various debugging tools that are available to you in Flex Builder 2.

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Creating an XML application using Flex Builder – part 3

Welcome to the final part of the three part case study on building a Flex 2 application. In part 1, we started to build our real estate listings application. We created the interface for the application and the custom class that loaded the external XML document. In part 2, we populated the interface to show a list of all properties from the XML document.

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Creating an XML application using Flex Builder – part 2

Welcome to part 2 of the three part case study on building a Flex 2 application. In part 1, we started to build our real estate listings application. We created the interface for the application and the custom class that loaded the external XML document. In part 2, we'll populate the Repeater control in the interface to show a list of all properties from the XML document.

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Using Flex for JavaScript-ActionScript communication

In this tutorial, I want to look at how you can create communication between ActionScript in a Flex application and JavaScript in a Web page. The ExternalInterface or External API in ActionScript 3.0 is what makes it all possible!

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Creating an XML application using Flex Builder

So far in this series of articles, we've spent a lot of time looking at the different things you can do with Flex 2. We've looked at some of the built-in components you can use to create Flex applications. We've also created custom components and ActionScript classes.

In the next three articles, I want to take you through a case study where you can put together what you've learned so far to create a complete Flex application. We'll use an external XML document to power the application which will show us real estate listings. We'll see a summary of all listings and we'll be able to click to find out more about each listing. The case study will give you good insight into how you might approach building a complete application.

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Creating your own Flex components

If you've worked with Flex Builder 2, you'll notice that it includes many different built-in components. There are user interface controls such as ComboBoxes and Buttons, containers such as HBoxes and VBoxes, and navigation controls like the Accordion and TabBar. There is even a range of charting components that you can purchase separately.

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