On May 14th there will be a eSeminar on the new integration between BlazeDS and Spring. This will make it easier for Java developers to create enterprise RIAs using the Adobe Flash Platform and Spring.

We’ve seen high demand for our two Boot Camps we’ll have as part of the Adobe Developer Day event on May 19th in Bucharest, Romania. Because the space we have limits the number of persons we can accept, we had to turn down a lot of people.

Because we hate to turn down people, I found a solution. We will do in the next months these Boot Camps in Bucharest (Adobe’s office), and for the people who can’t attend in person, we’ll do it online using Acrobat Connect. As a reminder these events are free.

What do you have to do? Just send me an email(s) with the one of the following session names a the subject to mihai dot corlan at adobe dot com:

These are the sessions we’ll do in our office, in Romanian

• Boot Camp Introduction to AIR [RO]
• Boot Camp BlazeDS/LCDS [RO]

These are the sessions we’ll do online in Romanian:

• Online Boot Camp Introduction to AIR [RO]
• Online Boot Camp BlazeDS/LCDS [RO]

These are the sessions we’ll do online in English:

• Online Boot Camp Introduction to AIR [EN]
• Online Boot Camp BlazeDS/LCDS [EN]

We are working to set up a system to sign up to these events online. For now, just send me the emails. We will notify you about the dates by email!

Duane Nickull posted a video tutorial on LiveCycle ES. You can learn how you can call a function from LiveCycle ES. Watch the video here.

Another segment has been released on Adobe TV, this time on how to generate a Flex and J2EE Database Application. I was a little bit sleepy and tired after three and a half days of MAX :D. I show how to create such applications using the data wizard, or LiveCycle Data Services and SQL Assembler. Enjoy!

I am a little bit obsessed lately with the need to share a Flex project as easy as possible and to import a project with minimum work on my part. For example, I grabbed the LiveHelp / Call Center application made by Christophe Coenraets and I made it a single Flex with Java combined project with support for BlazeDS. What does this mean? It means if you have installed Flex Builder 3, WTP, and Apache Tomcat 5.5 you should be able to download this zip file, and then import the project using the Import > Flex > Import Flex project Wizard. You will have the BlazeDS server, Java code and Flex code in this project. After this, you’ll need to add this application to the Tomcat server. You can start the server from within Eclipse and run the mortgageapp.xml and callcenter.mxml and it should work like a charm.

However, because WTP links the name of the local JRE used in its configuration files, it is possible that the project will not work on your machine. The solution is very simple: just open the properties for the project and go to “Java Build Path”, then select the “Libraries” tab. Here you need to delete the “JRE System Library” entry and then click “Add Library” button. In the new window select the “JRE System Library” list item and click “Next”. On the next page select JRE 1.5 or newer and you are done.

Sometimes you already have a J2EE project (made with WTP) and you want to be able to make it also a Flex project. Probably you don’t like the idea of creating a new Java/Flex project and copy the files. Neither do I :D (If you want to create a new Java/Flex project then check my previous posts about creating a Java/Flex project and debugging this project).

Fortunately the solution is there in Flex Builder. You need to select the project in project explorer and right click to bring up the contextual menu for the project. Then you should select Flex Project Nature > Add Flex Project Nature:

Selecting this command will open a wizard that looks like the one for creating a new Flex project (the differences are that some options are disabled as the project already exists and you are just adding new things to it). So here is the first page and you can see you have the option to choose if you want to use LiveCycle Data Services / BlazeDS or not. On the second page you can enter the path for Flex WAR file (if you choose remote object access on first page). Click “Finish” and you got yourself a Java/Flex combined project.

Final words

I will not lie to you, these two features (combined Java/Flex project and Add Flex Nature) are very dear to me as I was the engineer who worked on them for Flex Builder 3 :) But besides the sweet memories and countless meetings to shape up these wizards and endless fights with my quality engineer on what should happen, I had another reason to write my first technical post on this subject: I talked in the last couple of months with Java developers who work with Flex and they didn’t know about these features yet :(

So, I am really curious if you guys find this helpful or not and if there are other things you still need (I have friends inside Flex Builder team so we can push our wishes :) ).

In my previous post I described how you can install WTP in Flex Builder and how you can create a combined Java/Flex project and run it.

But what if you want to debug both the Flex and Java code from the project at the same time?

Actually, it is pretty simple. The steps are very similar with the ones described in the previous post for running the application.

First thing let’s add two break points one in Flex code and one in Java code. My project is using LCDS (LiveCycle Data Services) and I have a custom adaptor written in Java to read/write data to and from databases. So I place one breakpoint inside ActionScript in the function that is called when I want to add a new item and the other breakpoint inside the Java adaptor class that actually adds the item to the database.

The next step is to stop the server from Server view if it is running. After this you need to start it but in debug mode (for these actions you have at the top right of the Server view some icons that perform these actions).

After the server started you right click on the Flex application file and choose from “Debug as” entry of the contextual menu “Flex Application”. This will start the default browser with the Flex application running.

If I click the button that adds a new item, Flex Builder will go in Debug view and you will see the Flex debugger. If you resume, Flex Builder will continue the execution and as the Flex code calls the server destination you will go to the Java code and again Flex Builder goes in debug view this time for Java. Here are the two screenshots one for Flex and one for Java:

We saw how to create a new project that has both Java and Flex natures, then how we can run and debug the project. But what if you have an existent Java project and you want to be able to edit Flex files? I will show you the easiest way in the next post.

Whenever I work on a Flex project with Java backend I create a project in Flex Builder that combines Java and Flex. I find that this is the easiest way to work even if I don’t touch at all Java code and I just mess around with Flex/AS files. This is one piece of news brought by Flex Builder 3.

What advantages do you have using this setup? You can edit/run/debug both Java and Flex files in the same editor and same project; you can see the changes as soon as you save the modified files.

Let’s see what you need and how you can create a combined Flex/Java project with or without LiveCycle Data Services or BlazeDS.

Installing WTP (Web Tools Project)

In order to be able to create the combined project you need to have installed WTP (Web Tools Project – this is an open source Eclipse plugin that adds J2EE capabilities into Eclipse). If you start the New Flex Project Wizard and select J2EE from server technology and you don’t see the option “Create combined Java/Flex project using WTP” it means you need to install it.

For this you go to Help > Software Updates > Find and Install… Then select “Search for new features to install” and click Next. You should see something like this (select Europa Discovery Site) :

After this you follow the dialog screens and at some point you will see this screen (you press the “Select Required” button and Next, Next, Next and Finish):

Possible problems installing WTP in Flex Builder: sometimes although you have installed WTP you don’t see the option “Create combined Java/Flex project using WTP”. The solution is simple: type in a console the path to the eclipse executable and add “-clean” option; for my machine this command looks like: “c:eclipseeclipse.exe -clean”. After this you should be good to go.

Create the combined Java/Flex project

Let’s open the New Flex Project wizard and select from “Application server type” combo-box “J2EE” and make sure that the option “Create combined Java/Flex project using WTP” is checked (check the first image from this post if you need help). If you want to create a project that is using LCDS (LiveCycle Data Services) or BlazeDS you need to check “Use remote object access service”. Click “Next” and you see this page:

In the second page of the wizard you need to pay attention to “Target runtime”. WTP has a wonderful feature: you can configure your local J2EE server using a simple wizard and then Eclipse can deploy your application and can start/stop/republish the application on this server; all of these are happening from within Eclipse. This “Target runtime” is exactly what this thing does: it lets you associate your project with an already defined server or to define a new one. Click on the “New” button and you will see this wizard:

WTP supports the following J2EE servers: Tomcat, JBoss, WebSphere, JOnAS4, Oracle OC4J Standalone. From my experience the best for developing is the Tomcat: it is the fastest in terms of starting/ restarting/ redeploying. After you selected the desired server click “Next”.

In the second page of the wizard you need to browse for the server installation folder:

Click “Finish” and we are back to new Flex Project wizard. We select the target runtime from the combobox. If you choose on the first page to use LCDS, then on this page you need to browse for the path to Flex WAR file: if you want LCDS you should look for the file lcds.war under the installation folder and if you want BlazeDS you should look for blazeds.war under the blazeds folder. With this we are done and we can click “Finish”.

Once the project gets created you can play with the perspectives and change between Flex perspective and Java or J2EE perspective:

Run the project

So we have the project. Let’s see how can we run it. As I said before, WTP make this task child’s play. First thing we need is to be sure we have “Server” view displayed (if not you go to Window > Other Views… and select Server from the tree).

The first time you want to run a project you need to associate the project with the server – you do this only one time. You just right click inside the Flex application file and choose from the contextual menu Run As > Run on Server option:

This command will open this little wizard (you select the previously defined server and then click “Finish”):

After this the project gets compiled, the server is started and the project is deployed. At this point if you are looking inside the Server view you should be able to expand the Server node and see that a child exists with the same name as the project and the status of the server should be Started and Synchronized:

Now every time you change something in your project as soon you build the project, the project is redeployed automatically. And when you want to see the Flex application you choose Run As > Flex Application (the default browser is opened with the Flex application inside). Also because the project is associated with the server you can use the top right buttons from the Server view to start / stop / debug / publish.

This is it. In my next post I will talk about debugging Java and Flex code using this type of project.