Flex Monkey Patches

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.

Here is an example demonstrating how to use project references to refer to source files in other projects as well as swcs in other projects.

If you take a look at this zip file, you will find that it contains 3 projects.

The first project is a normal Flex project called globalIncludes which contains an actionscript file, vars.as.
A second project, Expando, is a library project, which contains an mxml component.

• In the properties/Project References dialogue for this project there is a checked refererence to the globalIncludes project.
• In the properties/sourcepath for this project, I have added the root folder from the globalIncludes project. (Just click the add Folder… button and navigate to the folder.) This folder is added as ${DOCUMENTS}\globalIncludes.

Now in your Expando project you can see a “virtual directory” from the globalIncludes project labeled - [source path] globalIncludes.

In my mxml component in the Expando project, I refer to the actionscript file from the globalIncludes project by doing an include:

Then in my component I use a variable defined in that vars,as actionscript file to expose a version number tooltip in my component.

Note:

In the Expando project, I have right clicked on the ExpandoComboBox.mxml and selected – “Include class in library”. That way, whenever I make changes to this component, the swc will be recompiled.

My third project, Sample, is a normal project that just has an application in it.

• In the properties/Project References dialogue for this project there is a checked refererence to the Expando project.
• In the properties/Flex Build Path/Library Path dialogue for this project, I have added the Expando Project (click Add Project… and you will be able to select the Expando project since it is in the list of Project references.)

Now you can launch the Sample.mxml application and see that the tooltip for the ExpandoComboBox is 1.0 which has come from the vars.as actionscript file in the globalIncludes project.