Professional BlazeDS: Creating Rich Internet Applications with Flex® and Java®

11.1. CRUD with Flash Builder 4

Flash Builder (earlier called Flex Builder) is the Adobe-supported Integrated development environment (IDE) for development of Flex and AS3 applications.

Flash Builder, from version 3 on, includes a CRUD code generation utility that generates the list and item detail views as a database table. This generated application works for Java, PHP, and ColdFusion server-side environments. That is, three different server-side components can be generated to support the CRUD operations.

The latest version of Flash Builder is Flash Builder 4, which as I write this book is in public beta. This new version of the IDE enhances the CRUD generation capabilities substantially from its earlier version. In this section, you will get a chance to see the various available features of this new and improved IDE. You can download the latest copy of Flash Builder from http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashbuilder4/. Flash Builder is a commercial product. You can apply your existing Flex Builder 3 licenses to the beta release or use the trial version, which is valid for 60 days.

In the first example, I will demonstrate CRUD generation for simple HTTP service endpoints.

11.1.1. CRUD with RESTful Endpoints

In this section, I will create a simple Flex application and wire it up to consume data from HTTPService endpoints. Such endpoints could typically adhere to the REST architectural style, which has gained in popularity over the past few years.

REST and associated concepts ...