The Space For App Developers

This year at MAX I did a geeky session about things that people don’t usually know about AS3, Flex and Flash Builder. Below you can find recording of my session and the slides.

As you probably know by now Flash Builder 4 with Flex 4 were released yesterday. Along with that, new content was published on Adobe TV. You can find there my video describing new styling and theming capabilities in Flex 4 and Flash Builder 4.

UPDATE (31.03.2010): You can also get this video through iTunes and on YouTube.

Other videos also published:

• Build your first desktop application
  Follow along as James Ward shows you how to build your first desktop application using Flash Builder, Flex and AIR.
  
  
• Flash Builder 4 for ColdFusion Developers
  ColdFusion Evangelist Terry Ryan highlights the flexibility of the data-centric features in Flash Builder 4. He shows off the new workflow for wiring a ColdFusion back-end to a Flex front-end.
  
  
• Build a Dashboard Application in Flex 4
  Adobe Platform Evangelist Michael Chaize offers a step-by-step tutorial on building a dashboard application. He walks you through a Flex 4 project created with the Flash Builder 4 IDE.
  
  
• Build your first Flex 4 application
  Platform Evangelist Serge Jespers describes how to build a Flex 4 application using Flash Builder 4. Discover the benefits of controlling components’ properties such as improved efficiency in managing data.
  
  
• Write Flex and PHP code using Flash Builder 4
  Platform Evangelist Mihai Corlan explains how to write Flex and PHP code using Flash Builder 4 and Zend Studio 7.1. He also illustrates how remoting enables your application to consume PHP services.
  
  
• Debug Flex and PHP code using Flash Builder 4
  In this video, Mihai Corlan discusses how to debug the code of a combined Flex and PHP project using Flash Builder 4 and Zend Studio 7.1. He reviews how to use breakpoints to test your application.
  
  
• Define events in Flex 4 with Flash Builder 4
  Platform Evangelist Mihai Corlan shows how to create components with Flash Builder 4 and ActionScript, and he simplifies how to customize an event dispatch in a Flex 4 project.
  
  
• Styling Flex 4 Components with Flash Builder 4
  Piotr Walczyszyn demonstrates the new theming capabilities in Flash Builder 4 and the new features of the CSS engine that come with Flex 4.

In this tutorial I will explain how to configure a development environment to work with PHP and Flex projects in one tool. In order to do that I will use Eclipse PDT 2.1 (PHP Eclipse plugin), Flash Builder 4 Plug-in Beta 2 and the latest Eclipse IDE for Java EE Developers package, which is eclipse-jee-galileo-SR1-macosx-carbon (of course if you are on Windows you should get the proper Windows version instead) at the moment. Additionally I will use MAMP (Mac, Apache, MySQL, PHP stack), of course there are other possible solutions like WampServer for Windows, multiplatform XAMPP, or Zend Server.

Download links:

- Eclipse IDE for Java EE Developers – http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/

- Eclipse PDT 2.1 (pdt-Update-2.1.2.zip) – http://www.eclipse.org/pdt/downloads/

- Java SE Development Kit (JDK 6 Update 17 – at the moment) – http://java.sun.com/javase/downloads/index.jsp

- Flash Builder 4 Plug-in Beta 2 – https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/entitlement/index.cfm?e=labs_flashbuilder4 (you need to login with a free Adobe ID account)

- ZendDebugger (download latest version depending your operating system) – http://downloads.zend.com/pdt/server-debugger/

- MAMP, WAMP, XAMPP, or Zend Server
http://www.mamp.info/
http://www.wampserver.com/
http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp.html
http://www.zend.com/en/products/server-ce/

Installation steps:

Step 1) Start with Eclipse IDE for Java EE Developers installation, it is as simple as unpacking it to some folder on your drive. If you are on Windows make sure you have the JDK (Java Development Kit) installed on your system. Without that Eclipse will not run.

Step 2) Run Eclipse from the folder you installed it in. A clean installation will start with welcome screen; select Workbench option in the right upper corner to go directly to the development environment.

Step 3) Install PDT 2.1 as described in the following section of the PDT installation wiki: http://wiki.eclipse.org/PDT/Installation#Eclipse_3.5_.2F_Galileo_.2F_PDT_2.1

IMPORTANT DON’T INSTALL PDT 2.2 AT THE MOMENT as it has some bugs that are causing PHP scripts to crash. Go to the link  at the top and download one marked on a picture below (pdt-Update.2.1.2.zip):

As described in the wiki link above, in Eclipse go to Help > Install New Software… > Add… > Name: PDT, Location: jar:file:/path/to/pdt-Update-2.1.2.zip!/

Step 4) Install Flash Builder 4 Plug-in Beta 2 pointing to the Eclipse installation that was unpacked earlier, as shown below:

Step 5) Now you are ready to run your PHP/Flex development environment. Just remember NOT TO run it with the links provided by the Flash Builder 4 Plug-in installation. IMPORTANT: Directly start Eclipse from the folder you unpacked it into.

You can switch to the PHP or Flash perspective in upper right corner of your Eclipse Workbench by selecting it from the list in the Other option.

Step 6) Install the Apache, MySQL, PHP stack. Unpack ZendDebugger downloaded from one of the links above. Follow the instructions in README file to install it on your system.

Alternatively you can use ZendExtensionManager and configure it this way in your php.ini file:

zend_extension_manager.debug_server=/Applications/MAMP/bin/php5/zend/lib/ZendDebugger-5.2.15
zend_debugger.allow_hosts=127.0.0.1
zend_debugger.expose_remotely=always

IMPORTANT: ZendDebugger-5.2.15 is the unzipped ZendDebugger package and its subfolders need to be renamed to follow this schema: php-5.2.x. For example: 5_2_x_comp => php-5.2.x

Just remember to drop dummy.php into your website public root folder on your dev environment.

Step 7) Create your PHP project and give it a Flex Project nature by right clicking on your PHP project and selecting option Add/Change Project Type > Add Flex Project Type. This way you can have all your code in one single project. Of course you can have two separate projects for PHP and Flex but this is your decision. Do what will be more convenient for you.

And now you can Rock & Roll with PHP and Flex!