This book is about building Flex applications using the Adobe AIR runtime for multiple mobile devices. More than just focusing on the coding conventions, this book focuses on how to build a fully featured mobile application as well as all on the various aspects of mobile application development.

Going beyond development and new Flex mobile features, this book integrates often-requested and extremely useful application development features such as unit testing, user tracking, MVC, Robotlegs, and ANT deployment. Utilizing every tool in your tool belt will give you the ability to create fully featured enterprise applications using Flex’s and AIR’s new mobile features.

Some developers may feel that these other features exist outside of the requirements for a Flex mobile development book. To these developers I would say that I’ve included most of the typical needs for Flex mobile application developers—whether the problem is Flex specific or not.

Roadmap

• Chapter 1 starts with a general introduction to Flex mobile, mobile development, and a simple Hello World example.
• Chapter 2 hits the ground running by kicking off the Rotten Tomatoes Application, setting up some views, and running the application on your desktop and mobile device.
• Chapter 3 builds upon chapter 2 by introducing data persistence to your application using Local Shared Objects, SQLite, and the new PersistenceManager.
• Chapter 4 diverges from the main application, creating a new application and, specifically, showing how to use various device capabilities with Flex.
• Chapter 5 returns to the Rotten Tomatoes application and updates your application to work on a variety of devices, no matter the resolution or screen size of the device.
• Chapter 6 takes the Rotten Tomatoes application and gives it an industrial-strength overhaul by introducing Robotlegs, an MVC micro-architecture.
• Chapter 7 breaks up your Rotten Tomatoes application, enabling it to run device-specific features while reusing the maximum amount of code.
• Chapter 8 expands the Rotten Tomatoes application by introducing Native Extensions, user tracking, and revenue-generating ads integration.
• Chapter 9 goes beyond the Rotten Tomatoes application and builds in unit testing.
• Chapter 10 diverges from the Rotten Tomatoes application by focusing on the Application Descriptor and all of the features enabled with this single file.
• Chapter 11 shows how to use Flash Builder to create release-quality builds of the application.
• Chapter 12 rounds out the book by showing how to use ANT to automate the build process of all the application’s parts.

Who should read this book?

This book is about building mobile applications using the Flex framework. As such, this book targets two types of developers.

The first are current Flex developers interested in taking their knowledge to the next level and onto the mobile landscape. Whether you’ve used Flex to develop small widgets or built entire applications, there’s much to learn about the new mobile paradigms and best practices when building multi-screen applications. For current Flex developers, I’ll discuss the new components optimized for mobile development, architecture strategies for multi-screen applications, and how to create applications that look and run great across multiple devices and multiple screen sizes.

The second type of developers that this book is intended for comes from other languages and wants to create mobile applications. Rather than deciding to learn Objective-C, Android Development, C++, C# or any of the other languages that create installable mobile application, we can just use Adobe AIR coupled with Flex and build applications that work on iOS, Android, BlackBerry, the web, and even the desktop with a singular codebase. These developers are busy, hard-working, and ready to maximize their output. If you’re coming to Flex for the first time, you’ll quickly see how to create MVC-based applications with Flex, use Flex to build mobile applications, and release your mobile applications to each of the major markets.

Code conventions and downloads

As this is a programming book, you can expect it to include many code samples, configuration files, and other required listings to help you understand how to create Flex-based mobile applications. Source code in listings or in body text is in a fixed width font to separate it from ordinary text. In addition to code listings, ActionScript class and method names, parameters, properties, along with HTML and XML elements will also be presented using fixed width font. ActionScript method names within text will not include the full method signature—the name and list of required parameters.

Well-formatted code utilizes plenty of whitespace, improving readability, but a book has limited space on a page, so I’ve had to condense the code listed in this eBook. The full, nicely formatted, code can be found online in my GitHub account at https://github.com/jonbcampos/Flex-Mobile-In-Action or on the publisher's website at www.manning.com/FlexMobileinAction.

Under each code listing I include the path to find the specific file being discussed in the listing. This is meant to make finding full code segments as simple as possible. In some rare cases not all of the code is shown in the book—mainly due to repetitive code. Complete applications, including these missing segments, can be found in my GitHub account. You can also download the source code in a zip file from the publisher's website a www.manning.com/FlexMobileinAction.

Also in the code listings, you will find code annotations that point out certain code segments and explain what each individual line of code accomplishes.

Flex is an open source project, released under the Apache Software License and distributed with the Adobe Flash Builder IDE and many others. You can also download Flex, in source or binary form, from the Flex home page at http://incubator.apache.org/flex/.

Author Online

The purchase of Flex Mobile in Action includes free access to a private web forum run by Manning Publications, where you can make comments about the book, ask technical questions, and receive help from the author and from other users. To access the forum and subscribe to it, go to www.manning.com/FlexMobileinAction. This page provides information on how to get on the forum once you are registered, what kind of help is available, and the rules of conduct on the forum.

About the author

Jonathan Campos is a principal architect for Miller and Associates as well as a committer on the Apache Flex project. Within the community Jonathan is a user group manager in Dallas, Texas. You can see Jonathan’s blog at http://unitedmindset.com/jonbcampos and on twitter at http://twitter.com/jonbcampos.