RobotLegs is an IoC framework that’s been rising on the Flex framework scene. It’s a pure AS3 microarchitecture so it can be used in non-Flex projects as well. One thing that I like about the framework is that it does a pretty good job of telling you what’s wrong when you’re building your app. For example it’ll let you know if you’ve missed adding a class to the context. In this presentation I’ll show you how to set up a Flex app from the ground up using RobotLegs. In addition I’ll show you how to set up Flex Unit with RobotLets so that you can write unit tests or do test driven development for your project. I’ve worked with several Flex frameworks and RobotLegs is one of my favorites so far. This will be more of a live coding session than a theoretical talk about IoC. In this session you’ll learn how to set up your package structure, create a context, create a central data model, map events to commands, create and communicate with services, set up your views and use mediators as backing classes that will contain the ActionScript for them. I’ll also share a technique that I’ve been using that splits the context up so there isn’t one giant class to manage.

More information about the July preso can be found here:

http://ria5280.org/calendar/event/2010/7/15/178056

After reviewing the example that Chris provided I wanted to take things s step further and integrate Hibernate and MySQL into the project. I wrestled with the JAR’s, the classpath, the Spring and Hibernate XML markup, and the Hibernate Annotations for a while and then realized that I needed to get a firm understanding of some Spring fundamentals. Manning’s Spring in Action was recommended by a colleague and so far has been really shedding some light.

I was able to create a simple Spring project (no Flex, no BlazeDS, no Hibernate… yet) to help me understand some of the core Spring concepts. The IoC Container and AOP are two very important pieces of the Spring framework. This very simple project only utilizes the IoC Container. Aspect Oriented Programming is very cool and I also recommend checking it out. AOP is not covered in this example. (Check out cross cutting concerns.)

There is a simple Ant task to compile, jar and run the application. You’ll also need the latest version of the JDK for this application.

You can download the project using a Subversion client using the following URL:

http://seantheflexguy.com/applicationcontextex/

You can also download a zipped version of the project here:

http://seantheflexguy.com/java/ApplicationContextExample.zip

To run the project navigate to the directory where you downloaded the project, and extracted if you grabbed the zip. Then from the project root using a Terminal or Command Prompt issue the command: ant to compile and: ant run to run the application.

The first version of the application used a BeanFactory. This second version uses the ApplicationContext class instead. BeanFactory is in Spring’s core module, it’s the main Spring container that provides DI. The ApplicationContext module builds on BeanFactory providing additional capabilities such as: internationalization and validation support and access to the application event lifecycle.

The Simple Spring Example Project should help you understand the most basic level Spring mechanics. The only JARs required by the project are spring.jar and the commons-logging-1.1.1.jar, both are included with the project. The Ant build file will set the CLASSPATH for these JARs, if you bypass Ant make sure to set these on the CLASSPATH prior to compiling the application.

So far Spring really looks like a powerful way to organize and manage Java application development. You should take a moment to check it out. Also be sure to check out the Spring BlazeDS Integration.