Sep
30
Macromedia Flex BULLSHIT!
Filed Under DIY (Do It Yourself), Websites
The more I learn about what Flex can do for me, the more I want to use it. However it is just becoming the biggest pain to get it to talk with CF. I have read through the forums, walkthroughs and anything else I can get my hands on and still cant get it to work. Maybe Flex is just too new of a technology to use.
The sample apps I've looked at so far, require no less than 20 steps of copy/pasting code and configuration. The "simple" contact_manager application has 28 steps!! There are so many things that go wrong, it's impossible to figure out what to fix when something breaks. Belive me, with 28 steps there is a huge margin for error. For example, it is suggested that the a project file be "cleaned", so you press the button to clean it. However, that deletes files you need to run the application, and now something else is broken.
Every example on the macromedia site isn't difficult, but the whole point of Flex, is do get stuff into and out of databases, and that is the most complicated process I've ever encountered in web development. If a designer can't do it, or it requires the skills of an engineer to figure out, it isn't worth it. I mean really, just look at how much code it takes to populate a listbox with values. This is stupid!!!!
Jeff Knooren has been a professional software and website developer for over 8 years. Working in leadership roles for political candidates, b-list musicians, and fortune 1000 companies.
Comments
5 Responses to “Macromedia Flex BULLSHIT!”
Leave a Reply
Have you checked on the flexcoders or houseoffusion lists? There are plenty of people having great success using Flex and CF.
I hope I haven’t given the impression that I haven’t had ANY success. I’ve gotten the Blog Reader example from the Adobe documentation to work. That was easy… Come to think of it, I think it was your blog used in the example Matt. Your name sounds familiar. I also tried the Store application, and getting product data from the XML file worked fine. Since these apps work, I know Flex does work on my local machine.
I have checked those sites you mentioned a few days ago. They led me to Ken Reiss’s blog post which talks about a solution to one problem I had. I think they helped me fix “Unknown Destination”. But I’m not really sure, as there are other errors to address. Cryptic messages are another problem. This “Send Failed” tells me a lot… I think. WFT does it mean, and how do I fix it?
Generally, I think that’s why people are getting frustrated with Flex. They’re lucky to get a few hours free time a week learn new stuff. It’s too complex for your average person to fix. Flex Remoting, isn’t easy or fast as it sounds. Honestly, I would have given up long ago, but I’m positive my application is an interesting showcase for the Flex Product.
I think you are confusing Flex and Flex Data Services. It takes a single tag and one method call to invoke a CFC to populate a Flex list box with values. And that contact manager can be built with not many more tags. If that is all you want to do, simply populate a drop down with server side data then you don’t need FDS, good old Flash Remoting will do the trick.
The examples you refer to use Flex Data Services. If you want to push updates to the client, or to perform data synch, then yes you’ll want to use FDS. And yes, connecting via FDS is more complicated because it does so much more. The configuration is indeed more involved than simple client side invocation. Many apps warrant that functionalty, but basic ones probably don’t.
Don’t confuse the two.
Oh, and if you want to see how fast you actually can create a full CF powered Flex app, try the ColdFusion/Flex Application Wizard.
— Ben
“The configuration is indeed more involved than simple client side invocation.”
I see. I do have use for the pushing/synch thing, someday. I was going to use Fusebox 5, so I’ve already assumed the request/result method anyway. There is no way I’m giving up on this error. I can’t advance until I populate at least one form, and one field, from a database of my own creation. But I’ll be careful to only follow remoting examples. So “Send Failed” must mean it’s trying to push… hmm.
Mike Nimer had an hour long Breeze presentation on the ColdFusion/Flex Application Wizard. Good stuff. Yes, it is fast. I used it to make that screenshot above last Sunday, in about a minute. I’ve been trying to figure out why it didn’t work since then. Is the “ColdFusion/Flex Application Wizard” for the Master/Detail forms push/synching? I guess what I should be using is the CFC wizard, and not the Application wizard? Or, maybe it’s the project type I’ve chosen… my mind is jelly.
UPDATE: What Ben was talking about, is located here in the LiveDocs.
I am a big fan of ColdFusion and a big fan of Flex, but I am no fan of the wizards unfortunately and FDS had some issues in the early iteration (8 with LiveCycle Data Services 2.5 seems to have greatly improved the situation).
I had a really easy time getting Flex to work with CF using the built-in remoting. I really don’t see why *most* projects require FDS/LDS - it really is a power user feature that is overkill for most projects IMHO. I know a lot of the early examples focused on that because it was a flashy feature…demos generally love wizards you know.
Anyway, I recommend you just go with straight remoting unless you actually require something FDS/LDS offers.
And, for my own little plug, if you want your code generated, just use my code generator - http://code.google.com/p/cfcgenerator - which coincidentally enough uses Flex 2 and ColdFusion via remoting (and the source is available if you want to take a look under the covers).