In recent years, Adobe has recognized the benefits of the open source development model for several of its projects and has launched a website dedicated to open source at http://opensource.
adobe.com/. This includes the Flex 3 SDK development toolkit, the BlazeDS server-side solution, and several ActionScript 3–based libraries.
Flex 3 SDK
The Flex 3 SDK package is Adobe’s official development environment for ActionScript 3 development using the Flex framework and targeting Flash Player 9 and newer. In April 2007 Adobe announced its intention to make the entire Flex SDK open source. Since then, Adobe has made the SDK publicly available for free, with the full source to the framework code including access to the source code of all the tools (compiler, debugger, and so on) and the framework. Adobe has also made the bug-tracking system open to the public.
You can currently find more information at the following locations:
The Flex 3 SDK:http://opensource.adobe.com/wiki/display/flexsdk/Flex+SDK The Flex bug-tracking database:http://bugs.adobe.com/flex/
BlazeDS
BlazeDS is a Java-based server solution offering real-time communication services for the Flash Platform. It consists of three major components:
A remoting service to access server-side methods and objects A messaging service for a publish/subscribe messaging support
A proxy service to allow Flash applications to access types of data not usually allowed under the Flash security sandbox
BlazeDS can be installed on a J2EE-based server or run stand-alone using the BlazeDS turnkey server.
You can find both deployment options, as well as access to the source code, at the BlazeDS website (http://opensource.adobe.com/wiki/display/blazeds/BlazeDS).
ActionScript 3 libraries
In addition to the large, officially funded projects at Adobe, several ActionScript libraries are written and maintained by Adobe staff members. Some of those libraries include the following:
as3ebaylib is a library for accessing eBay’s XML API through ActionScript. You can find it at http://code.google.com/p/as3ebaylib/.
as3corelib is a collection of classes and utilities that make ActionScript development easier.
You can find it athttp://code.google.com/p/as3corelib/.
as3flexunitlib is a unit testing framework for Flex development. See Chapter 5 of this book for additional information. You can find it athttp://code.google.com/p/as3flexunitlib/.
Although the core SDK is open source, Flex Builder is not part of Adobe’s open source initiative and will remain a commercial product. Likewise, its Flash authoring environ-ment remains a commercial endeavor.
There is also a set of additional charting components that come exclusively with Flex Builder Professional, which is also not part of the open source initiative.
as3odeolib is an ActionScript library for retrieving podcasts from the Odeo service. You can find it athttp://code.google.com/p/as3odeolib/.
as3youtubelib is a library for accessing the YouTube data API. You can find it at http://
code.google.com/p/as3youtubelib/.
as3syndicationlib provides a single interface for dealing with RSS and Atom feeds. You can find it athttp://code.google.com/p/as3syndicationlib/.
as3flickrlib is a library for consuming the Flickr API. You can find it athttp://code.google.
com/p/as3flickrlib/.
as3mapprlib provides access to the Mappr API that combines Flickr and geo-tagged informa-tion. You can find it athttp://code.google.com/p/as3mapprlib/.
Cairngorm is a framework for developing Flex-based rich Internet applications. You can find it athttp://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Cairngorm.
And many more . . .
As you’ve seen in this chapter, a lot of open source projects are available for Flash development. The rest of this book looks at a few of those projects. But the best thing about open source Flash is that new projects are starting all the time. Visit Flash community blogs, read the OSFlash mailing list, and do the occasional Google search since you never know what useful and amazing projects you’ll find.
We’ll end this chapter with a list of a few projects not covered in this book that are still worth check-ing out:
AlivePDF is an ActionScript library to generate PDFs. You can find it athttp://alivepdf.org/.
ARP is a lightweight development framework. You can find it at http://osflash.org/
projects/arp.
AsWing is a GUI framework and set of ActionScript components. You can find it athttp://
www.aswing.org/.
Degrafa is a Flex library for creating a drawing API in MXML. You can find it athttp://www.
degrafa.com/.
FlexLib is a set of Flex-based components ranging from an animated fire effect to a full sched-ule display framework. You can find it athttp://code.google.com/p/flexlib/.
GoASAP is a lightweight framework for building ActionScript 3 animation tools. Its main con-tributor is Moses Gunesch, also the author of Fuse. You can find it athttp://www.goasap.org/.
ObjectHandles is a Flex library that helps you build an interface to allow users to move and resize objects on the screen. You can find it at http://www.rogue-development.com/
objectHandles.html.
Pulse Particle System is a general-purpose particle library that includes an interactive particle explorer to help you create visual particle effects. You can find it at http://www.rogue-development.com/pulseParticles.html.
Sandy is an ActionScript 2/ActionScript 3 3D rendering engine. You can find it athttp://www.
flashsandy.org/.
Several projects are located at the Spicefactory website (http://spicefactory.org/). These include Spicelib, a library for task management, reflection, and logging; Parsley, an Inversion of Control (IoC) container, MVC framework, and localization utility; and Cinnamon, an ActionScript 3/Java remoting solution.
Prana is an application framework centered around an IoC container. You can find it at http://www.pranaframework.org/.
Tweener is an ActionScript 3 tweening engine usually used to create both simple and complex animations. You can find it athttp://code.google.com/p/tweener/.
This chapter covers the following:
Installing the tools necessary for Flash development Setting those tools up so they best work with each other Creating a simple sample project with those tools Exploring some alternative workflows
In previous chapters, we described some of the tools available for open source Flash development. It’s time for you to install those tools and configure them to work together.
Many tools for open source Flash development exist. By combining different combi-nations of those tools, you can make hundreds of different development workflows, and different workflows will work better or worse for different developers. I will briefly describe two alternative workflows here. One will use ASDT and Eclipse, and the other will use FlashDevelop.
Before reading on, it may be helpful to download the accompanying material for this chapter from the friends of ED website (http://www.friendsofed.com). Once you’ve done that, extract the contents, and locate the Chapter 3 directory. It contains samples that will be referenced throughout the rest of this chapter.