Programming Flex 2

Chapter 19. Building Custom Components

At some point, you may want to build advanced components. For instance, you may want to create a truly custom component or a commercial-grade distributed component, or you may just want a much deeper understanding of and level of control over the underlying framework. Although Flex allows you to build components rapidly, as we saw in Chapter 18, developing advanced components requires a deeper understanding of the component framework and methodology.

In this chapter, you will learn about the component framework life cycle and develop an understanding for what it has to offer. You will do so through theory as well as by developing a custom component. You will also learn about ways to implement functionality within the component framework.

Component Framework Overview

Understanding what the component framework implements, as well as how and where it does so, is key to building good components. Flex contains a sophisticated framework that aims to abstract many of the underlying details of Flash Player and add many features not supported natively by Flash Player. A majority of the framework is built to support a rich set of features for the UI components that the Flex components use. This framework allows components to share a common set of APIs, and it allows components to function in a predictable manner based on the needs of the Flex framework. Using this framework will allow you to develop your own custom components that also behave and operate ...