Flex Monkey Patches

Launching external applications from AIR is not supported.
Here are a few non-Adobe resources that are looking into bridging that gap:

http://www.merapiproject.net/
http://aperture.fluorinefx.com/
http://www.mikechambers.com/blog/2008/01/22/commandproxy-its-cool-but-is-it-a-good-idea/
http://www.jeffryhouser.com/index.cfm/2008/4/22/Using-AIR-to-launch-other-applications

I have been working on a few Adobe AIR projects and along the way as I run into what I feel will be common pieces of functionality to many of the AIR applications I may write, I have been abstracting that functionality and breaking it out into various Flex library projects. After reading the the Developer Center article on Managing Adobe AIR updates with ColdFusion 8, which helped me understand the general process, I decided to tailor the code that I was using in my current AIR application.

What I came up with was a pretty simple approach. I decided to use information that was available in the application descriptor ([appname]-app.xml) for update purposes. In setting values for 3 of the keys in the application descriptor with deliberate usage in mind, the information necessary to deal with determining version dominance, location of the latest version info and installers would be readily accessible.

I figured that if the current, running application was going to get it’s version and update information from the application descriptor, then just having that information available in the same format somewhere on the web to download would make for a simple architecture. By using the “applicationID” and “appFileName” to construct a url to this “latest version” application descriptor, I could easily grab this XML and read from it the “appVersion” to compare against the current appVersion. If the latest appVersion is greater than the current appVersion, then the new application installer could be located at a url I contruct from the applicationID, appFileName and appVersion. Here is how I contruct these two URLs from keys within the application descriptor:

From this, you can see how I use appFileName and appVersion. That is pretty straight forward. Each new AIR installer that I distribute will just follow this naming convention. The applicationID usage is a little less clear, but here is how I use it. For each application that I build, I create a subdomain off of my main domain. Then, I map that subdomain to a folder. When I create a new build for release, I increment the appVersion key in the application descriptor and in that folder, I place the latest application installer and the corresponding application descriptor.

More details on this library can be found at its Google Code project home: http://code.google.com/p/flex-monkey-patches-upda-man/.
Later this week, I will also be posting a useful little AIR application with source code that makes use of this library and should serve as a good sample for this functionality.

So it is almost February already! Where did January go? I’ve been a bit slow out of the gate this year as far as keeping up a decent pace in posting helpful samples to my blog. Actually, I have been working on things behind the scenes, a few details of which I will reveal now. I have launched a new blog on a new domain. The content is to be all “work” related, so it will be about Flex/Flash Player/Adobe AIR, LiveCycle Data Services/Blaze DS/ColdFusion and other fun technologies. I’ve also been working on an AIR app which I hope to get out at least in a fairly stable beta form around the same time that Flex3/AIR releases. It will most likely be open source and hosted on Google Code. I will also be compiling a library of useful components, extensions to components and monkey patches to the Flex framework. This new blog and content will all be available on:

http://flexmonkeypatches.com

All old posts on http:blog.739SaintLouis.com should link to or redirect to the same content on my new site. I will leave my old site up for an undetermined length of time with the intent of transforming it content-wise into a more personal blog (time permitting.)

Regards,

-Kyle

Adobe Flex sdk beta 3 and Adobe AIR beta 3 just release to Adobe Labs yesterday, so I have updated my version checker AIR application to detect the new SDK and also compiled the app against the new AIR classes targeting the new AIR runtime.

All other blog references will be pointing to this new version

>>>> here <<<<<.

I just recently was made aware that there are actually 3 different “builds” of Flex SDK “hotfix 3″ out there.
1. Originally hotfix 3 was applied to hotfix 2 (updating a few swcs) - version 1
2. Late summer 2007 it was realized this confused some folks so the hotfix kb article was replaced with a full version of the SDK with the fixes applied - version 2
3. Flex Builder 3 beta 2 shipped with the latest/greatest SDK from the 2.0.1 branch which is an equivalent to hotfix 3 SDK - version 3.

These versions should be functionally identical afaik.

I updated my version checker to detect and differentiate these versions. I have updated the original blog entry here and also have links to the update AIR app here.

Finding out what version of the SDK you are using for Flex Builder, command line compilation, Ant compilation or in your Flex war file for FDS or LCDS can be comfusing. Especially if you have added one of the SDK hotfixes for 2.0.1. When faced with issues from customers, I often ask them what version of the Flex SDK or FDS/LCDS they are using. Sometimes they don’t know or don’t remember if they have installed a hot fix or if they are running FDS or LCDS. To be fair though, finding out what version of the SDK is not clear nor is finding out the version of a FDS/LCDS war. Cracking open some swc files or jar files to find a build number or starting your server to look for a build number in the output or logs and translating the build number to an actual version equivalent really could be made easier. I thought this would make a good AIR application, so I started coding and here is what I came up with. Mind you, it is not feature complete, pretty looking or by any means architecturally elegant. It does the job though…those other things can come later. This is build with Adobe Air Beta2, which can be downloaded here.

Here is a link to the installer.