Remoting & Messaging in Flex

Columbus Flex Enthusiasts - Presentation of Remoting & Messaging in Flex with AMF

Transcript

1. Integrating Flex using AMF Remoting & Messaging in Flex Christopher Grant - crgrant@gmail.com 1/20/2010
2. Agenda — What is AMF — Data Integration Options in Flex — Capabilities of AMF — Why it is useful — Benefits of AMF — Where to get it — Server Side Options for AMF — How to use it — Terminology — Configuration — Examples — Simple Remoting — Simple Messaging — Custom Objects
3. What is it
4. Data Integration Options — Hyper Text Transfer Protocol – HTTP — HTTPService — Simple Object Access Protocol – SOAP — WebService — Action Message Format –AMF — Remoting — RemoteObject — Messaging — Consumer — Publisher
5. AMF Capabilities — Remoting Services allow your Flex application to directly invoke methods of Java objects deployed in your application server. — Message Services provide a publish/subscribe infrastructure that enables your Flex application to publish messages and subscribe to a messaging destination, enabling the development of real-time data push and collaborative applications.
6. Why use it
7. Benefits of AMF — Binary transfer is faster than text — Objects are very small and are compressed using zlib — Fast Serialization/ Deserialization — Designed to serialize and deserialize quickly under low memory and slower CPU conditions — AMF data is parsed directly into objects, meaning there is no lag for interpretation or parsing — ActionScript Object format — Support for Native Types and Custom classes
8. Where to get it
9. ServerSide AMF Options — PHP: Zend, AMFPHP, WebOrb for PHP, SabreAMF — Java: BlazeDS*, Red5, GraniteDS*, WebOrb for Java — .Net: FluorineFx*, WebOrb* for .Net, AMF.NET — Python: PyAMF — Ruby on Rails: RubyAMF, WebOrb for Ruby on Rails — ColdFusion: Built in* * indicates push / messaging capabilities
10. How do you use it
11. Terminology — Channel — Protocol-based conduits — Channel Sets — Improves the quality of service in the face of network failures or individual Channel problems — Endpoint — The server interface responsible for encoding and decoding data into messages — Destination — Client side reference to resources used for both publish-subscribe and point- to-point messaging — Polling vs Streaming — Polling opens & closes the connection by message — Streaming keeps the connection open at all times
12. Channels, Set and Endpoints Oh MY! Destination Destination EndPoint Channel Channel Set Client Destination EndPoint Channel Polling Streaming Destination Destination EndPoint Channel Streaming
13. Configuration — Code based — AS and MXML — Config Files — services-config — ToolKit — Swiz
14. Config Files — Services-config — Need to tell flex where it is — Setup with IDE Wizard — Setup Manually — Flex Compiler arguments: -services "C:\....” — Pointers to — remoting-config.xml — proxy-config.xml — messaging-config.xml — Used by Client and Server
15. Config File Excerpt Services-config.xml … <service-include file-path="remoting-config.xml" /> … <channel-definition id="channel-amf“ class="mx.messaging.channels.AMFChannel"> <endpoint url="http://{server.name}:{server.port}/{context.root}/messagebroker/amf" class="flex.messaging.endpoints.AMFEndpoint" /> </channel-definition> Remoting-config.xml <service id="remoting-service“ class="flex.messaging.services.RemotingService“> … <destination id="HelloWorld"> <properties> <source>com.grant.Thing</source> </properties> <channels> <channel ref="channel-amf" /> </channels> … </destination> … </service>
16. Simple MXML Excerpt <mx:RemoteObject id=“myRemoteObject" destination=" HelloWorld " result="resultHandler(event)" fault="faultHandler(event)" /> <mx:Button label=“SayHello“ click=" myRemoteObject.getOperation(“SayHello”).send();" /> private function resultHandler(evt:ResultEvent):void { resultTxt.text = evt.result.toString(); }
17. Real Examples Let’s look at code already…geez!