Loading Modules in Flex

I have in the works an article on map interfaces. Its challenging to provide the map and metadata on, say, a point clicked on the map. Maybe its a marker for a house for sale. I click on the marker, where do I display the price, images, descriptions etc? Pop up, draggable boxes, open a new page. Lots of choices, some better than others. Flex actually increases the possible cool options here.

My article was driven by a new local search application I am writing. I'm debating whether to load modules within the application. With this in mind, I have built a demo. Right click and you can view the code. This does the following:
1) Loads modules on the fly based on user button click; next or previous(note the use of an interface)
2) Allows the main application to call methods in the loaded module.
3) The modules listen to events fired from the main application
4) The text in the main application is localised; so button labels can be switched from English to Spanish.

Take a look at the code or download it to test. In the project properties ->flex modules, you will need to have the two modules included. So they are compiled with the application.

The demo is potentially a base for building mapping applications. Or applications which include a mapping module.

Simple MVC

I have just posted the code for a very simple MVC. Right click and you can see the code and download it. Its very simple. This should give you a feel for the guts of the MVC architecture. Should make understanding Cairngorm and the rest a little easier.

Twitter and Contracting

I follow Jesse wardens blog. He is an ace Flash and Flex developer. Though not an RIA map developer, he has lots of useful tips and tricks on general RIA development. I particularly liked his most recent entry on contracting and twitter

Flash CS3 Map Evolution

The Flash CS maps I have been building using AS3 is moving along slowly. I shared a link in an earlier blog entry to the first phase. Most of the time here was spent assembling the assets ie. movieclips of each continent/country/state and supporting XML. The XML is tied to the movieclip via a number - <id>1</id>, sprite 1. Thus I have an all continents swf and individual continents eg. northamerica.swf. These are made up of individual country/state movieclips. Clicking on a continent, loads the individual continent swf. Since Flex is the glue for the swf's, I have used eventing to communicate between each of the swf's; flash to flex, flex to flash. The eventing code I used was an adaptation of code shared by Jason Fincanon. The code is as follows:


The next phase of the map I have also now posted.



Here I have integrated the zoom functionality from Peter Organa (see earlier post). Thus the zoom.swf provided by Peter now listens to which continent was selected and loads the appropriate swf. Now a selected continent can be panned, zoomed into and out. This will allow, in the next phase, geolocated pins to be added to the map.