Don’t forget to register for WebDU and come and see my sessions on Flex/AIR, LiveCycle Data Services, BlazeDS, CoCoMo, and even using some of the new Flash widget features in Acrobat 9!

More information on the Code War can be found here webdu:Adobe User Group Code War!

Related posts:

1. Mixing it up in the Pixel Bender WebDU presentation
2. Bring layout control back to CSS
3. Representing Australia at ApolloCamp

Some of the content includes:

• Using Flex with PHP
• Branded applications with AIR
• Showcasing local industry applications (customer presentations)
• Using ColdFusion messaging gateways with Flex
• Integrating MS Exchange with ColdFusion and Flex

We’ve also just finished a 4 city tour around Australia with CFCAMP where I introduced Microsoft Exchange server integration and how to bring this into Flex and AIR.

Slides and demo files for everything over the past month and more will come shortly.

Enjoy!

EDIT (12/12/07) – I’m currently traveling in the US so there’s been some delays in tidying up the demos… but they’ll be ready in time for Christmas!

Related posts:

1. webDU 2008 presentations now available
2. Our Web 2.0 on-demand presentations
3. AIR Camp keynote slides

Here you’ll see more than just ColdFusion. How about powering your Flex applications and targeting desktop applications with ColdFusion? I think it’s sounds like a winning combination! And that’s exactly what i’ll be presenting on.

Interested in learning more? You’ll want to be there – REGISTER NOW!

Event dates:

• November 20th: Sydney
• November 21st: Brisbane
• November 22nd: Melbourne
• November 27th: Perth

Check out the wiki, vote for the community driven sessions, and come along and network with other developers interested in the latest for the Web, RIAs and desktop apps with AIR.

Hope to see you there (whether that’s in Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne or Perth)!

Related posts:

1. Adobe Refresh Australia, learn about MAX 2007
2. Online Flex seminars in Australia and New Zealand
3. Representing Australia at ApolloCamp

Adobe Australia are holding a “Refresh” event for the local developer communities. This is your chance to hear first hand the latest news and announcements surrounding Adobe’s developer technologies! I promise you will not be disappointed! So come and spend an afternoon with your local Adobe crew including myself, Matt Voerman, Mark Blair, Mark Szulc and many others.

Click here to register.

Details:

Join us for an opportunity to connect with the local developer community, whilst refreshing your knowledge on the latest from Adobe at Adobe Refresh 2007.

There’ll be summaries from the Keynote Presentations at Adobe Max 2007, as well as Community Expert Tables and plenty of time to socialise.

When:

Tue 30 Oct 07
Sydney Convention & Exhibition Centre, Darling Harbour
13:30 – 17:00

Wed 31 Oct 07
Telstra Dome, Melbourne
13:30 – 17:00

Hope to see you there!

Related posts:

1. CFCAMP Australia is more than just ColdFusion
2. Australia and New Zealand, check out the AIR derby
3. Google Gears and Adobe Apollo on SQLite

Just Freakin’ Cool (aka Wild Card)
Winner: AT2 Booking System – Nathan Vale (#1 Overall Winner)

Product Configurators/Self-Service Guided Applications
Winner: Accommodation Finder – Harald Krefting

Components and Gadgets
Winner: SpellCheck – Hilary Bridel

Data Dashboards
Winner: CFMonitor – Ben Robinson

Communication/Collaboration
Winner: gofreeSMS – MobiMarketing

Congratulations to everyone who entered!

Each category winner received an Xbox360, with the overall winner walking away with a 42″ LG Plasma Screen. The full write up and showcase can be seen at http://www.builderau.com.au/comps/adobe-flex-derby/.

Related posts:

1. Australian Flex Developer Derby!
2. Australia and New Zealand, check out the AIR derby
3. Adobe announces Developer Fridays

Both myself and Mark Szulc will be delivering the Flex content, and Ben Forta has willingly volunteered to present “Building Rich Internet Applications using Cold Fusion & Flex”. Read on for more information -

Intro to Flex 2
Flex enables enterprises to create personalized, multimedia-rich applications that dramatically enhance user experience.

Wed 20 Sept ­ 11am AEST (Australian Eastern Standard Time)
Wed 27 Sept – 11am AEST

Intro to Flex Data Services
In this seminar learn how Flex Data Services is a powerful services environment that enables Flex developers to rapidly deliver data-intensive Flex applications.
Wed 18 Oct, 11am AEST

Building Rich Internet Applications using Cold Fusion & Flex
Come listen to Ben Forta, Adobe Technology Evangelist long time ColdFusion sage and rich internet application fanatic discusses why experience matters and how to create magnetic applications that look great, empower users and work hard to achieve your business objectives.

Wed 22 Nov, 11am AEST

To register for these Acrobat Connect online seminars go to http://events.adobe.co.uk/events/cgi/main.cgi?country=pa

Related posts:

1. Adobe Flex 2 available NOW!
2. New Flex 2.0 Beta products released!
3. Australia and New Zealand, check out the AIR derby

Firstly, there is a tool at hand that can help; the netConnectionDebugger.swf. Using the default install path for Flex this can be found in the following directory:

C:\Program Files\Macromedia\Flex\extras\netConnectionDebugger

The netConnectionDebugger reports on every remote call of a Flex application and its response from the server. However, if you have some logical bug in your in your CFC remote object it’s not very helpful. For example say, you made a call to a function called ‘loginUser’ (that returns a structure) in Login.cfc and you named a table in a query incorrectly:

[code]
SELECT *
FROM wrongTableName
WHERE User_Name = '#User_Name#'
AND Password = '#Password#'
[/code]

You will get the rather helpful message in netConnectionDebugger:

“The value returned from function loginUser() is not of type struct.”

Huh? I set the returntype=”struct” in the function! What’s going on?

Of course you could write a unit test page using something like cfunit for every function in every CFC before hooking it to a Flex call; but it is inevitable something will be discovered in user testing you just didn’t see during development and account for in a unit test.

Help is at hand, wrapping all the internal logic of a cffunction with an error trapping custom tag that makes extensive use of cfcatch, you can quickly get to the bottom of many soul destroying bugs.

cf_errorTrapping.zip

cf_errorTrapping will not report on invalid cfml syntax (the parser will do that for you). What it will do is help you track down the really nasty bugs you could otherwise spend hours trying to workout, as it will send a ‘complete’ error report back to the netConnectionDebugger.

Optionally, using request variables cf_errorTrapping can be set to write the error report to a directory and or email it.

Happy debugging!

Related posts:

1. Strongly type a CF return using Cairngorm
2. Alert! Alert! Listen to the buttons!
3. Cast a loaded Flex Application to an Interface

I discussed the solution with Robin Hilliard of Rocketboots, and to quote him –

The value of typing the return is to ensure that throughout the rest of your client application you are working with an instance of the appropriate VO type and not just a vanilla Object with String properties, which is what remoting will hand to you from ColdFusion.

You may otherwise encounter hard-to-trace errors (e.g. missing getter/setter logic) caused by assuming that you had a real VO.

Nicely said.

To counter this my Value Objects have upper case variable names, strongly typed attributes, and a copy contructor which again strongly types the vanilla object returned from CF. See the following example:

[as]// Person Value Object

import org.nevis.cairngorm.vo.ValueObject

class com.flexdaddy.samples.vo.person.PersonVO
implements ValueObject
{
public var GIVEN_NAME:String = “”;
public var FAMILY_NAME:String = “”;

public function PersonVO( o:Object )
{
this.GIVEN_NAME = String( o.GIVEN_NAME );
this.FAMILY_NAME= String( o.FAMILY_NAME);
}
}[/as]

To call this copy contructor and cast our result object as a strongly typed Value Object, we can make a slight change to the behaviour of the Delegate. Rather than sending the CF result directly back to the calling command, it is neccessary to cast the Value Object from within the delegate as we are dealing with a ColdFusion issue.

The following code sample introduces an onResult method inside the delegate, as well as a filterResult method which returns our nicely constructed Value Object. In order to make this work we need to set the delegates onResult method as the resultHandler for the pending call. This then calls the onResult in the responder (the calling command).

[as]// User Detail Sample Delegate

import mx.utils.Delegate;
import org.nevis.cairngorm.business.Responder;
import org.nevis.cairngorm.business.ServiceLocator;
import com.flexdaddy.samples.vo.person.PersonVO

class com.flexdaddy.samples.business.GetUserDetailsDelegate
{
public function GetUserDetailsDelegate( responder:Responder )
{
this.service = ServiceLocator.getInstance().getService( “myService” );
this.responder = responder;
}

public function getUserDetails() : Void
{
var pendingCall = service.getUserDetails();
pendingCall.resultHandler = Delegate.create( this, this.onResult );
pendingCall.faultHandler = Delegate.create( responder, responder.onFault );
}

public function onResult( event:Object ) : Void
{
responder.onResult( filterResult(event.result) );
}

public function filterResult( result:Object ) : PersonVO
{
return new PersonVO( result );
}

private var responder:Responder;
private var service:Object;
}[/as]

Now our command will receive a strongly typed Value Object and it’s business as usual

Related posts:

1. Alert! Alert! Listen to the buttons!
2. Cast a loaded Flex Application to an Interface
3. Building RIA’s with Flex and Cairngorm