Please get in touch regarding your AIR application development and/or user interface/experience design needs.

Foundation AIR:
Creating Desktop Applications with the Adobe Integrated Runtime (Foundations)
by: Zach Stepek
Paperback – Jan, 2008

Professional AIR: Application Development for the Adobe Integrated Runtime
by: Charles Freedman, Keith Peters, Clint Modien, and Ben Lucyk
Paperback – Feb, 2008

Flex X Cookbook:
The Adobe Developer Library Guide for Rich Internet Application Developers (Cookbook)
by: Joey Lott and Chafic Kazoun
Paperback – Feb, 2008

Flex X User Interface Design & Development:
Creating User-Friendly Rich Internet Applications
by: Matt Voerman and Simon Reid
Paperback – Feb, 2008

Creating Mashups with Adobe Flex and AIR
by: Chris Korhonen and David Hassoun
Paperback – Jan, 2008

Professional Adobe Flex 3
by: Rich Tretola
Paperback – Jan, 2008

Foundation Actionscript 3.0 with Flash CS3 and Flex
by: Steve Webster, Sean McSharry, and Tim Willison
Paperback – Nov, 2007

AdvancED Flex Application Development: Building Rich Media X (Advanced)
by: R Blank, Chris Charlton, Omar Gonzalez, and Hasan Otuome
Paperback – Oct, 2007

Flex Solutions: Essential Techniques for Flex 2 and Flex 3 Developers (Solutions)
by: Marco Casario
Paperback – Oct, 2007

Flex 3: A Beginner’s Guide
by: Michele E. Davis and Jon A. Phillips
Paperback – Mar, 2008

The first chapter outlines some basics about AIR and explains some of the reasons why AIR was created.

Chapter 2 explains how to get up and running with the AIR SDK including installation instructions, AIR application packaging and deployment information and also instructions for building your first HTML/JavaScript based AIR application. (Please note that using the SDK to develop AIR apps is a little different than using Flex Builder 3 but there are still enough parallels to make this a great read for Flex centric developers.)

Chapter 3 details WebKit, JavaScript use within AIR, and how to setup and use AIRAliases.js to access the AIR API from JavaScript. (Pretty cool stuff, accessing the Flash APIs from JS.)

Chapter 4 lists AIR/HTML/JavaScript code examples with explanations for 10 areas of AIR functionality.

I think the book is easy to grasp because it does use HTML/JavaScript. Because those language are second nature to a lot of developers that part of the code in the examples doesn’t distract from AIR specific information being presented.

One thing also mentioned is Aptana. You can use it to develop AIR/HTML/JavaScript applications. Check it out here: http://www.aptana.com/

Adobe Integrated Runtime for JavaScript Developers was written by: Mike Chambers, Daniel Dura and Kevin Hoyt.

At the moment Serrano is having some trouble displaying images on Mac’s (or at least the one my friend Joshua Behshad tested with). So I need to get that kink worked out. There are a few other issues, but I think the app is presenting the basic proof of concept for now.

Please take a look and let me know what you think. As I mentioned there is still a bit of work left so consider this somewhat of a preview.

One thing to mention is that the port to Flex Builder 3 was painless. Pretty much copy and paste unlike the SQLite app that I had built which took quite a bit of work to get ported. Just an FYI for other AIR developers out there.

Download Serrano

Installer:
AIRSQLiteExample.air

Flex 3 Project files (source):
AIRSQLiteExample.zip

/*
* Super-simple SQLite example for Adobe AIR 1 Beta
* 06/14/07
* Sean Moore
* seantheflashguy@gmail.com
* seantheflashguy.com/blog
*/

import flash.data.SQLResult;
import flash.filesystem.File;
import flash.data.SQLStatement;
import flash.data.SQLConnection;
import flash.events.SQLEvent;
import flash.events.SQLErrorEvent;

import User;

private var exampleDB:SQLConnection;
private var exampleDBFile:File;
private var dbStatement:SQLStatement;

[Bindable]
private var userData:Array;

private function init():void
{
    initAndOpenDatabase();
}

private function initAndOpenDatabase():void
{
    exampleDBFile = new File("app-resource:/ExampleDatabase.db");
    exampleDB = new SQLConnection();
    exampleDB.addEventListener(SQLEvent.OPEN, onExampleDBOpened);
    exampleDB.addEventListener(SQLErrorEvent.ERROR, onExampleDBError);
    exampleDB.open(exampleDBFile);
}

private function onExampleDBOpened(event:SQLEvent):void
{
    if (event.type == "open")
    {
        getRecords();
    }
}

private function onExampleDBError(event:SQLEvent):void
{
}

private function getRecords():void
{
    dbStatement = new SQLStatement();
    dbStatement.itemClass = User;
    dbStatement.sqlConnection = exampleDB;
    var sqlQuery:String = "select * from Users";
    dbStatement.text = sqlQuery;
    dbStatement.addEventListener(SQLEvent.RESULT, onDBStatementSelectResult);
    dbStatement.execute();
}

private function onDBStatementSelectResult(event:SQLEvent):void
{
    var result:SQLResult = dbStatement.getResult();
    if (result != null)
    {
        userData = result.data;
    }
}

private function onDBStatementInsertResult(event:SQLEvent):void
{
    if (exampleDB.totalChanges >= 1)
    {
        getRecords();
    }
}

private function addUserToDatabase(user:User):void
{
    var sqlInsert:String = "insert into Users values('"+user.firstname+"','"+user.lastname+"','"+user.email+"');";
    dbStatement.text = sqlInsert;
    dbStatement.removeEventListener(SQLEvent.RESULT, onDBStatementSelectResult);
    dbStatement.addEventListener(SQLEvent.RESULT, onDBStatementInsertResult);
    dbStatement.execute();
}

private function onAddUserButtonClicked(event:MouseEvent):void
{
    var user:User = new User();
    user.firstname = firstNameTextInput.text;
    user.lastname = lastNameTextInput.text;
    user.email = emailTextInput.text;
    addUserToDatabase(user);
}

private function onUsersDataGridChanged(event:Event):void
{
}

private function onRemoveUserButtonClicked(event:MouseEvent):void
{
    removeUserFromDatabase(usersDataGrid.selectedItem as User);
}

private function removeUserFromDatabase(user:User):void
{
    var sqlDelete:String = "delete from Users where firstname='"+
                                  user.firstname+"' and lastname='"+
                                  user.lastname+"' and email='"+user.email+"';";
    trace("sqlDelete="+sqlDelete);
    dbStatement.text = sqlDelete;
    dbStatement.removeEventListener(SQLEvent.RESULT, onDBStatementInsertResult);
    dbStatement.addEventListener(SQLEvent.RESULT, onDBStatementDeleteResult);
    dbStatement.execute();
}

private function onDBStatementDeleteResult(event:SQLEvent):void
{
    if (exampleDB.totalChanges >= 1)
    {
        getRecords();
    }
}

TONS of new features many which can be seen on Ted’s blog here.

Be sure to download the updated documentation too! (There are two links at the bottom of the page.)

Here are 4 new videos for Flex 3 as well.

Flex Builder 3 just finished downloading for me so I should have a SQLite example online soon.

Happy downloading!!

http://apolloranch.eventbrite.com

RIA Summit
Thursday, May 3, 2007
8:30 a.m. – 2:00 p.m.
Adam’s Mark Hotel
1550 Court Place
Denver, CO 80202
http://eventsadobe.com/ria

Here is a small Apollo app I’ve been putting together using Flex Builder. I am calling it ApolloList but that is not permanent for obvious legal reasons. In its current state you can search the “jobs” section from craigslist.com by keyword and also change the target city using a ComboBox component. This is not the ultimate goal of the application however it is already pretty cool (and I think you can change cities more quickly than on CL too).

The next major step is to munge all of the data from multiple (10+) cities and render the aggregated results to the apps HTMLControl component. That is something I’ve wanted to do with craigslist for a long time. (I’m not aware of a current way to search multiple cities using the CL UI.)

Another item that needs to be resolved is the display for the job descriptions. I’m still brainstorming on how the next level of navitation will work and how the more detailed data will be displayed.

There are of course the craigslist.org Terms to deal with though which I need to read through a bit more before posting this app live. In the meantime you can check out the screen captures below. Depending on the feasibility of using the CL RSS feeds I would also like to create another ComboBox that could be used to change the section being searched from “jobs” to “for sale”. I will also probably need some whole other dialog where cities can be turned off and on using CheckBoxes.

Other ideas include the ability to save data and potentially compare it. That could probably be useful for “for sale” searches to find average prices on items per country/state/city etc. You may want to save a job too. The CL data could also be tied to other web services. That leads to a few ideas…

I also have the indeed.com job search API working in the app and adding all the other job search API’s available is a thought at this point. In the end craigslist might not be the best data source because there is no public API that I have seen but I still wanted to build this app if just to search multiple cities on CL for myself…