Flex Solutions: Essential Techniques for Flex 2 and 3 Developers (Solutions)

Flex is the quickest and most effective technology for the creation of Rich Internet Applications for the Web. Its extensive library of components and totally customizable framework, combined with the ubiquity of Flash Player, has guaranteed its success.

The ecosystem of products that rotate around Flex 2 and Flex 3 is really broad. Flex Builder, Flex SDK, and Charting Components are all essential parts of the technology that fit the different requirements of web development.

This enormous set of possibilities can easily lead to overload for developers like you. Theres just too much to learn and too many potential places to go when you hit a brick wall. Wouldnt it be nice to have a library of solutions to solve these problems quickly and easily?

This book provides just that, with more than 100 solutions to common problems in one handy volume.

Flex Solutions: Essential Techniques for Flex 2 and Flex 3 Developers faces problems and provides solutions that can be applied to any project, from the most simple to the most complex. The solutions range from customizing Flex components with ActionScript 3.0, using the data models and the ActionScript classes as Value objects, validating and formatting data, using RPC classes to access remote data, to optimizing data-exchange performance using AMF3.

Solutions are also provided for enhancing the security of Flex applications; and techniques are offered for optimizing the actual work environment by increasing the performance of Flex Builder, adding video content, and creating an AIR project to bring your web application onto the desktop.

If you want to learn about and start to develop RIAs in a short time, being immediately productive and mastering the Flex development techniques, Flex Solutions: Essential Techniques for Flex 2 and 3 Developers is the book you need.

In this book you'll: Discover real-world solutions for everyday Flex development, saving hours of development time. Learn how to customize and extend the Flex Components Model and design and program the look and feel of your Flex applications. Learn best practices and tips from a Flex expert for structuring the architecture of Flex applications. Use the Flex Remote Procedure Classes to connect to remote data with HTTPServices and the Java Platform, PHP, ColdFusion, WebServices, and RemoteObject. Use the new Flex 3 features, such as the AdvancedDataGrid component and the Charting Enhancements feature. Port your Rich Internet Applications onto the desktop with Adobe AIR. What youll learn Tips on using Flex components How to validate and format data How to manage complex data Filtering, sorting and using cursors on data with collection classes How to consume Web Services using RPC components How to display data using list-based controls How to effectively compile and deploy Flex applications How to customize the look and feel of your applications How to make your applications more secure How to become more efficient in using the Flex Builder IDE Unique tricks such as calculating memory usage, making your Flex application into an active desktop, and customizing states How to use the ColdFusion Extensions for Flex Builder How to interface your Flex applications with server-side code written in PHP, Java, Rails, and ColdFusion Working with Flex in enterprise enviroment using the Flex Data Services, Java Remote Object and AMFPHP Who is this book for? This book is for any Flex 2 or Flex 3 developer who is comfortable with the basics and wants to take their knowledge further with quick fire solutions to common problems. Please note that some of the solutions contained in this book require the Flex Builder 3 Professional release of the software.

User review
good reference book (beginner-intermediate)
For beginners and intermediate users I would give this book a 7 out of 10.

Flex Solutions contains 14 chapters, each divided into a series of solutions for basic flex tasks with background information, a description of what's involved, a code example, and an additional section with expert tips. In my opinion this is a good reference for beginner to intermediate Flex developers. The only other Flex book I have referenced is The Flex 3 Cookbook, but in hindsight Flex Solutions is probably the book I should have started with.

The author uses a problem/solution format for each chapter, starting with simple tasks and progressively introducing more complex solutions for each section. For the absolute beginner, the author doesn't start with explaining the Flex development environment but assumes the reader has access to FlexBuilder before jumping right into the first problem/solution. There is a section related to IDE performance but not until near the end of the book.

I found the contents of each solution clearly written and easy to read with good summaries of the basic knowledge required to handle each problem. Some of the content I already knew and understood. There were many things I did not know or that I was reminded of that made me re-think my own work and how I've approached different problems.

Coming from a JAVA background I am used to having many resources that demonstrate different ways to handle all sorts of problems. Flex Solutions offers many solutions for many basic topics but there is less content related to larger more complex problems. Of course everyone has their personal biases, but It would have been nice to see more solutions provided for issues in developing more complex projects. To name a few: there is little content related to Flex application frameworks. Little is written on how to load test or performance tune a project. It would have been nice to see coverage of third party build tools like Ant or Maven, and there is no coverage of Blaze or the LiveCycle products. To be fair, this is more of a reference book than an Russian novel so I guess there is only so much content that could be covered in the 800+ pages.

I've seen many reviews comment on errors in the code examples, but I haven't had time to try them yet so I can't comment. I've mostly been using this as a reference book and found it to be a useful source for improving my understanding of my own work.

User review
Bugs and bad practices
This book mostly takes the reader through lab exercises, creating code in MXML and ActionScript. I have two issues with this book. (1) the sample code is riddled with bugs, typos, etc. You can get the `working` code from the website but cross-checking the book code is tedious. (2) many of the examples didn't exactly exhibit best practices. As a Java/JEE developer I'm not sure I would structure MXML/ActionScript in the way that the author did. Implementing best-practices can also lead to best-understanding.

User review
I would reccomend
I would recommend this book. It may be a little bit of a battle for new comers sense it doesn't start easy and build up to intermediate. But it is an awesome book for anyone who is serious about learning Flex. I've read some of the reviews here about the code mistakes in the book and well, there are some and that's the only reason I didn't give it 5 stars. But given the magnitude of this book, the tremendous knowledge the author is sharing in it, I would still strongly recommend to anyone pondering over whether or not to buy this book to do so. If you are serious about learning Flex, I promise
you that the few typos are not going to keep you from learning it. Besides, it actually helped sharpen my debuging skills finding the errors.

User review
Good Stuff!!!

I recently had the opportunity to go back and learn more about Adobe Flex. I will be using Flex to complete my senior project in December. I need to get up to speed rather quickly and this is one of the books I felt could help me going forward.
The book is divided into fourteen chapters. The first two deal with Flex essentials and components. The next four cover working with data. This includes working data models to remote data using RPC classes. Those chapters are followed by one on compiling/deploying Flex applications and controlling the look of your applications. The book concluded with chapters regarding security, advanced techniques, more flex libraries, user navigation, and migrating your application to Adobe AIR.
The layout of the book is typical of most Friends of Ed books. I would have liked to see more color to break up the sections, but being that it is full of examples I can see why this was not possible.
What I liked about the book
I think the way the chapters built on each and were ordered in a logical fashion. I thought the author really excelled at providing examples that were relevant to what he was explaining and what a developer might use in the real world. The chapter on programming the design was the best I have seen on this topic and provided useful snippets that I will use going forward. The chapters on navigation, advanced flex builder techniques (especially the coverage of charting), and the framework libraries
What I didn't like about the book
I didn't like the fact that some of the code examples contained errors, but they were easy to fix with a thorough look through the syntax. For some reason, I could get none of the code examples in the chapter regarding RPC's to work which was quite disappointing, but I am not sure that was any fault of the code in the book. I wish the book would have went in to more detail on Flex's interaction with other web development frameworks such as Ruby on Rails. I would like to see some discussion on deploying Flex solutions to shared and dedicated servers. I understand the need to work on the local computer, but I would like to see more books broach this topic. I would have liked some coverage of connecting to a database such as MySql, but maybe that is beyond the scope of this book

Conclusion
I really enjoyed this book and I think I am ready to take the next step in learning Abode Flex. This book provided a solid foundation for me to continue learning Adobe Flex and I am sure I will use it as a reference going forward. I think I am about ready for the intermediate level books.
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User review
Great Flex Solutions Book
Flex Solutions: Essential Techniques for Flex 2 and 3 Developers by Marco Casario is a must have book. Why? Many simple, objective code snippets from which one can build many useful Flex applications. The simplicity of code examples can be also easily extended in real projects. The book is devided into problem oriented parts: Flex Basics, Using Components, Working with Data, Validating and Formatting Data, Managing Complex Data, Working with Remote Data, Compiling and Deploying Flex Applications, Designing and Programming the Look and Feel of Flex Applications, Flex Security and more. Each chapter consists of number of problems which are completely solved.

Marco, as it can be read in About the Author note, has been passionate about Informatics since he was a child. I have realized that fact during reading the Flex Solutions book. I have used code examples from the book in my Flex projects and doing so let me save time on looking for solutions in other sources.

If you want to learn more about Flex, this book is for you. If you look for a book with quick-fire solutions to common problems and best practice techniques, this book is for you. If you want to improve your Flex skills for Rich Internet Application development, this book is for you. And if you do not know Flex but want to learn what can be done with it and how, just guess: this book is also for you. I like very much problem solving approach in learning and therefore I recommend this book.