Flex on Grails (flexongrails)

Flex on Grails

Bridging Java and Rich Internet Application Development with Grails

Table of Contents
Part 1: Introduction
   Preface
   License
   Building Rich Internet Applicatons with Rapid Development Frameworks. ( almost done )
   A Gentle introduction to Adobe Flex (in progress)
   Grails : The friendlier cuddlier Java
   Hello World! Your First Application in Flex on Grails.

Part 2: Planning your Application
   Development Roles and Workflow
   Tools for Flex and Grails Development (in progress)
   Setting up Your Flex and Grails Projects

Part 3. Building a Data Layer
   Server-side Flex
   Grails, Hibernate and GORM
   BlazeDS
   GraniteDS
   RESTful Web Services
   Security

Integrating Data Frameworks part 1 : Swiz

Integrating Data Frameworks part 2 : Mate

Part 4: Building an User Interface
   Creating Skins with Flash Catalyst
   Understanding and working with the Flex Component Model
   Web Service integration
   Sharing Data
   Flex Scaffolding - view generation
   Adding Flex to Grails - swf and Browser Manager integration
   Testing The Front End
   Deployment and Hot-compilation

Part 5: Extending Your Flex Application
   Adobe Air - take your app to go
   SEO and RSS - Leveraging Grails' Data Bending Capabilities
   Third Party Integration - Facebook Applications with Flex and Grails 
   Flash on Grails - Integrating with the Gaia Scaffolding Framework

Part 6: Resources
    Quick Reference Sheet
    Links and Resources
    Reading List


About This Book
Adobe Flex is a set of tools and technologies that allow creating Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) in the popular Flash SWF format, supported by 98% of web browsers. Shifting away from Flash’s movie stage and timeline paradigm, Flex allows developers to work in a familiar Eclipse-based development environment. Amongst many new features, Flex brings powerful features for data-binding, xml support, and the ability to move RIAs into the desktop via the AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime).

Grails enables the coding-by-convention rapid-application development techniques available to web frameworks like Django and Rails using syntax and technologies familiar to Java Developers. Built on the Groovy language, Spring and Hibernate, Grails enables developers to quickly integrate into their RIAs familiar Java libraries like Drools, Lucene and Adobe’s BlazeDS Flex remoting.

This book brings both these versatile technologies together into a unified development and technological platform that allows you to rapidly develop
powerful and visually stunning Rich Internet Applications.

In this book, we will:

Explore and extend the power of Grails rapid application development to the world of Flash / Flex.
Bridge the radical changes to Rich Internet Application development promised by Flex and integrate them into a view layer technology for Grails.
Seamlessly integrate Flex and Grails development through new tools, techniques and methodologies from real life applications.

What you’ll learn

Build a complete end-to-end web-application integrating the best features of Adobe Flex, Flash and AIR with the power and simplicity of Groovy and Grails.
Understand and use the tools and methodologies needed to get Flex and Grails working together in the development cycle.
Fully explore communication options between Grails and Flex. Walk through a complete example using the Adobe BlazeDS server-based remoting framework, GraniteDS and a REST-based HTTP Service alternative.
Use Flex and ActionScript to set up a dynamic navigation and presentation layer for your Rich Internet Applications. Learn how Flex facilitates databinding, XML support, states, transitions, validation, embedding audio / video and desktop integration.
Add robust Java-based enterprise-level functionality --- search, search engine optimization, security, content internationalization and RSS feeds --- quickly and elegantly to your RIAs via Grails plugins.
Learn comprehensive strategies in which you can use the content management and CRUD functionality of Grails to separate the functionality and rich media assets of your Flex RIA into manageable interconnected parts.

About The Author
Tomas Lin is a software engineer that has been working with Java technologies for the last nine years. After discovering Flex and Grails, he has been fortunate to apply these technologies to large web projects such as http://www.suzuki.ca and http://www.danaykroydwines.com/ with great success. He currently works as a senior front-end developer for Pixsta in London, UK ( http://www.empora.com ).