In Part 1 of this example, I covered prerequisites, project creation and setup, and scaffolding in MyEclipse for Spring.  In Part 2, I will discuss adding the necessary pieces to get a Spring application Flex enabled through BlazeDS remoting.

This blog is divided into 2 parts:

• Part 1: Setup & CRUD
• Part 2: Adding Spring Flex

web.xml

1. Add the messagebroker servlet mapping: Insert the following code where the servlet mappings are defined.  This mapping is used by the Flex remoting object.

   <servlet-mapping>
       <servlet-name>ClassicFlexCars Servlet</servlet-name>
       <url-pattern>/messagebroker/*</url-pattern>
   </servlet-mapping>

2. Add the flex context file: Find where the ClassicFlexCars Servlet is defined.  In the param-value element for the contextConfigLocation, add /WEB-INF/flex-servlet.xml.  So the resulting servlet block should look like:

   <servlet>
       <description>generated-servlet</description>
       <servlet-name>ClassicFlexCars Servlet</servlet-name>
       <servlet-class>
           org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet
       </servlet-class>
       <init-param>
           <param-name>contextConfigLocation</param-name>
           <param-value>/WEB-INF/flex-servlet.xml,
             classpath:ClassicFlexCars-generated-web-context.xml,
             classpath:ClassicFlexCars-web-context.xml</param-value>
       </init-param>
       <load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup>
   </servlet>

flex-servlet.xml

1. Add a file, named flex-servlet.xml, to the ClassicFlexCars > WebRoot/WEB-INF folder with the following contents:

   <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
   <beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
    xmlns:flex="http://www.springframework.org/schema/flex"
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xsi:schemaLocation="
   
   http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans
   
   http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-2.5.xsd
   
   http://www.springframework.org/schema/flex
   
    http://www.springframework.org/schema/flex/spring-flex-1.0.xsd">        
   
        <flex:message-broker/>
   
        <!-- Expose the ProductService bean for BlazeDS remoting -->
        <flex:remoting-destination ref="ProductService" />
   
   </beans>

services-config.xml

1. When adding the Flex Project Nature, it adds a handful of files to the WebRoot/WEB-INF/flex folder.  Feel free to use whatever Flex provides.  However, to just get remoting up and running on a channel, all you need in the services-config.xml file is the following:

   <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
   <services-config>
   
       <services>
           <default-channels>
               <channel ref="my-amf"/>
           </default-channels>
       </services>
   
       <channels>
           <channel-definition id="my-amf" class="mx.messaging.channels.AMFChannel">
           <endpoint
          url="http://{server.name}:{server.port}/{context.root}/messagebroker/amf"
          class="flex.messaging.endpoints.AMFEndpoint"/>
           </channel-definition>
       </channels>     

   </services-config>

   NOTE: Anytime this file is udpated or modified, you’ll want to force a recompile of the swf file. These configurations are compiled into the flash file.

Add jars

1. The following jars need to be added either through classpath containers or the WEB-INF/lib folder.  Both can be found in the spring-flex download (with dependencies):
   • org.codehaus.jackson-1.0.0.jar
   • org.springframework.flex-1.0.1.RELEASE.jar

Flex UI – main.mxml

1. To get a simple list view of the miniature cars, all that is needed is a remoting object defined, a data grid, and a button to load the data:

   <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
   <mx:Application xmlns:mx="http://www.adobe.com/2006/mxml">
   
       <mx:RemoteObject id="ro" destination="ProductService"/>

       <mx:DataGrid dataProvider="{ro.loadProducts.lastResult}"/>

       <mx:Button label="Get Cars" click="ro.loadProducts()"/>
   
   </mx:Application>
   
   

Run it on BlazeDS

Add the BlazeDS tomcat server to the MyEclipse Server view by right-clicking the Servers pane and clicking Configure Server Connector.  Configure the Tomcat 6.x server to point to the BlazeDS tomcat directory.  Then add the ClassicFlexCars project to the server and run!  Browse to http://localhost:8400/ClassicFlexCars/ClassicFlexCars.html

References

• spring-flex: http://www.springsource.org/spring-flex, what I found particularly helpful was the distribution download with the samples.  Kudos to Christophe Coenraets for creating the test drive samples.
• MyEclipse Educational Materials

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