Adobe Developer Week 2008

March 24 – March 28, 2008

Adobe provides end-to-end web development tool suites and solutions. Join us to see what the buzz is all about in this one week long event with 20 sessions covering AIR, Flex, Flash, Mobile, ColdFusion and Dreamweaver technologies.

For maximum flexibility, you only need to register for the individual sessions you choose to attend, but as many as you wish. The sessions begin at the introductory level and move gradually into intermediate level during the week. Don’t miss this Adobe event exclusively for developers!

What Do You Need to Participate?
Online live seminars are scheduled events simulcast over the web via Adobe Acrobat Connect Professional. You’ll need a computer with a browser, Adobe Flash player and Internet connection. Voice-Over IP will broadcast over your computer if you have audio. Alternatively, audio is available via telephone. Access details will be provided once you register.

To register you need your Adobe.com membership login and password. If you need to create a membership, or do not remember your login and password, please go to the Adobe.com membership page.

Time Zone Conversion
Not located in US/Pacific time zone? See what time it is in your local time zone.
Seats are limited and eSeminars are scheduled to change without advanced notice.

Please find more details and register for the events at http://adobe.com/go/2008_developer_week

Adobe RIA Architect Summit 2008

It’s summit time again folks ! You might recollect the RIA Leadership Summit that happened when Shantanu was in Bangalore, which saw industry leaders from various IT Companies from across India attended the talk about Adobe’s vision and plans for the Rich Internet Application space. Since then, the India RIA scene has been more dynamic than ever and there has been an increasing demand for insights into architecture & design principles around RIAs. As an acknowledgment to this Adobe brings “The RIA Architect Summit“.

What is in it for me?:

• Hear Naresh Gupta (MD, Adobe India), David Wadhwani (VP, Platform BU, Adobe) share the exciting future of RIAs using Flex & AIR
• Meet acclaimed evangelists James Ward & Ben Forta
• Hear about the success stories of leading IT Enterprises who have adopted Flex & AIR.
• Experience RIAs built on Adobe platforms and hear from the teams that built them

Who should attend ? :

Architects, Technical Managers and Strategic Decision Makers

When & Where? :

Date : 03 April ‘08

Venue : The Chancery Pavillion, Bangalore

How do I get in?:

Register ASAP at http://adoberiarch.eventbrite.com/

Hurry! Registrations on a First Come First Serve basis…

Creating custom messaging adapters

You create custom messaging service adapters when you want a functionality which the default adapter is not providing. Default messaging adapter (Action script adapter) shipped with BlazeDS will just broadcast the message, which the producer sends. What if you want change this functionality? You just have to create your own service adapters.

You can create custom service adapter class by extending the flex.messaging.services.ServiceAdapter class. Other classes which we will use are:

• flex.messaging.messages.AsyncMessage
• flex.messaging.messages.Message
• flex.messaging.services.MessageService
• flex.messaging.services.ServiceAdapter

MessageService class is used for sending message to all the clients subscribed to the destination. This class provides methods like pushMessageToClients(), using which we can send messages to all the subscribed clients.

AsyncMessage class is used for creating message to send to the users.

The ServiceAdapter class and other classes required are in the flex-messaging-common.jar and flex-messaging-core.jar files. These jar files are bundled with BlazeDS.

Sample application

I have created a simple application in which I am creating a message and sending it to all the clients subscribed to a destination. When the user clicks on a button reading “Ready to bid”, the application will send message to all the subscribed clients. I used custom adapter to modify the message and send it to all the clients.

Note: you can achieve this sample application without using custom adapter also

Creating sample application

Steps

1. Create a custom messaging adapter class

2. Add the adapter to the services-config.xml

3. Create a destination

4. Create Flex application to produce/consume the message

Create custom messaging adapter

In this class, I just modified the message body and sent it to all the clients. You have to override the invoke() method of the ServiceAdapter class. Invoke() method will be called when any client sends a message to the destination. By overriding the invoke() method you get access to the message object, which the client sent.

Download the custom messaging adapter’s Java file

Configure the services-config.xml and creating destination

You have to add your destination and adapter definitions to either services-config.xml or the messaging-config.xml file. Add the destination and the adapter as shown in the code snippet below. I have added the custom adapter, created above to the configuration file using the adapter element. I have also added the destination and mapped it to the adapter.

<service id=”message-service” class=”flex.messaging.services.MessageService”>

<adapters>

<adapter-definition id=”SujitAdapter” class=”com.adobe.adapter.CustomMessagingAdapter”/>

</adapters>

<destination id=”CustomMessagingAdapter”>

<adapter ref=”SujitAdapter”/>

</destination>

</service>

Create Flex application

We have completed the configuration and the development on the server. We will create a flex application which subscribe to the destination and receive messages from other users. Users can also send messages to other clients on click of a button.

Download the mxml file

That’s it. We have created a custom messaging adapter for BlazeDS. You can create your own messaging adapters and map your destinations to the adapters. There is lots more than just creating custom messaging adapters. You can even manage the list of clients subscribed to a destination yourself, instead of leaving it to BlazeDS

Adobe Rocks

Flex Boot Camp rocked Hyderabad

We organized a three day Flex Boot Camp for engineering students in Hyderabad on 29^th Feb, 2008, 1^st March, 2008 and 2^nd March, 2008. We had 800 participants from various engineering colleges in Hyderabad, who attended this camp. The event was organized with help of KMIT College, Hyderabad. The KMIT staff held a major hand in making this event successful. T-shirts and participation certificates were distributed to the students, who participated in the hands on session and the contest.

This Boot Camp was an amazing experience. It was amazing to see the enthusiasm they had in learning about Flex and AIR. After each session, students surrounded the speaker and showered questions. We met students who had different levels of knowledge on Flex. There were lots of engineering students who were already developing applications using Flex and were asking questions on how to use Blaze DS and also on how to integrate Flex with Dot NET. Though it was a whole day event, I could see students taking down notes for each and every session.

Snaps

On 29^th Feb, 2008

We started off with a welcome speech and speech by Niel (CEO, Teleparadigms) followed by presentations by Ramesh and Ananth on Flex, AIR and RIA.

On 1^st March, 2008

We started off at 8:30 AM. Ramesh spoke about AS3, MXML and list based controls. Ananth spoke about events, data binding and collections in Flex. Jyoti explained how to use different controls and containers in Flex. I gave presentation on data connectivity using Flex. After the sessions were completed, all the teams had to take a screening test to participate in the hands on session as well as the contest. 250 teams took the screening test. We had to select 80 teams out of 250 teams; this was a difficult task as we had to evaluate 250 papers and we had to see the disappointment in the faces of the teams, who did not clear the screening test. While the screening test was in progress, we conducted a question and answers session for the students waiting for their team mates to complete the test. The student who answers the question gets to take a t-shirt or a Flex book.

On 2^nd March, 2008

We conducted a contest. Students had to develop applications using Flex in 6 hours. We came up with four different types of applications; teams had to select one application and develop that. The applications developed by the teams were amazing (I will post the application which we liked, as soon as possible). I can bet, you will not believe that those applications were developed in 6 hours. The winning team selected a web version of the iPod, which we called the SoftPod. The SoftPod application allowed the user to select either videos or images. The application plays the videos and on clicking on the video, it displays the set of options like dragging the video, pause, change volume. The image portion included zoom.

The runners up team developed a presentations creator. This application allows user to create presentations, add slides to the presentation, add images to the slides, add text to the slides and you can also select the slide enter and exit transition effects for the slides. Once the presentations are created, you can view the presentations using the application.