Flex Frameworks

 

 

 

Some say that if a technology has a lot of frameworks, then it is a sign of maturity. You might argue with that, but still I think it is interesting to know what are the available frameworks in the Flex/Flash world.

This is work in progress, thus if you know other frameworks, please post a comment or send me an email.

MVC frameworks and Dependency Injection

• Cairngorm (Adobe Open Source) – MVC framework
• PureMVC (Open Source) – MVC framework
• Mate (Open Source) – Mate is a tag-based, event-driven Flex framework
• Swiz (Open Source) – Metadata-based Dependency Injection framework
• Spring ActionScript (Open Source) – Dependency Injection framework part of SpringSource
• Parsley (Open Source) – IOC Container (Configuration and Dependency Injection), MVC, and localization
• Robotlegs – automated metadata based dependency injection micro-architecture (framework) with a light footprint and limited scope
• HydraMVC – total rewrite of the PureMVC API exclusively for Flex
• dpHibernate – lazy loading across BlazeDS and Hibernate
• Flight Framework – MVC framework

Articles to get some idea about what these frameworks offer:

• FrameworkQuest 2008: Introduction
• Choosing a Flex framework

Testing frameworks and code coverage

• FlexUnit (Adobe Open Source) – conceptually based on famous JUnit
• FlexPMD (Adobe Technical Services) – tool for auditing AS3/Flex code against bad practices (anti-patterns, unused code, over-complex code, inefficient code). You can add rules and it can be used from Ant/Maven or Automator (Mac).
• Funit (Open Source) – Metadata Driven Unit Testing for Flex
• asUnit (Open Source) – Unit Testing Framework
• fluint (Open Source) – Unit Testing with further richer asynchronous support and support for integration-level testing
• FlexMonkey (Open Source) – UI testing, capture replay
• Selenium (Open Source) – API for Selenium
• FlashSelenium (Open Source) – Selenium RC Client driver extension
• HP QuickTest Professional 9.5 (Commercial License)
• mock-as3 (Open Source) – mock object library
• FlexCover (Open Source) – code coverage
• FunFX – functional testing framework
• Mock4AS – a simple Mock Object Library for ActionScript3
• ASMock – ActionScript 3 Mocking Framework
• Mockito – mocking framework for Flex

Building and Continue Integration

• Ant task (Adobe Open Source) – comes with Flex SDK
• flexmojos (Open Source) – Set of maven plugins for Adobe AIR and Flex development
• ServeBox (Open Source) – Flex maven plugin
• Flex Maven Reports (Open Source) – Maven reports for Flex
• Hudson (Open Source) – Continuous Integration engine
• CruiseControl.NET (Open Source) – Continuous Integration engine
• projectsprouts (Open Source) – cross-platform project generation and configuration tool for ActionScript 2, ActionScript 3, Adobe AIR and Flex projects

Flash 3D Engines

• AlternativaPlatform
• Papervision3D
• Away3D
• Sandy3d (OpenSource)
• Ambiera Coppercube – create your scene or import your 3D models into the CopperCube 3D editor, set camera controllers, materials and more, and click ‘publish’.

Server side libraries/frameworks for Flex

PHP:

• Zend AMF – remoting library, part of the Zend Framework
• AMFPHP – remoting library
• WebORB for PHP – remoting and data messaging (producer/consumer)
• SabreAMF – remoting library

Java:

• LiveCycle Data Services ES (Adobe, commercial license) – remoting, data messaging, data management, proxy, real time data pushing and synchronization, paging
• BlazeDS (Adobe Open Source) – remoting, data messaging, proxy
• Graniteds (Open Source) – remoting, EJB 3 services, data push
• WebORB for Java – remoting, data management, real time data messaging, client synchronization and paging. Additionally, it supports streaming video, recording video and remote shared objects
• Pimento (Open Source) – data management

ColdFusion:

• LiveCycle Data Services ES (Adobe, commercial license) – remoting, data messaging, data management, proxy, data pushing and synchronization, paging
• BlazeDS (Adobe Open Source) – remoting, data messaging, proxy

.NET:

• WebORB for .NET – data management, real-time messaging, remoting, MSMQ integration, client synchronization for data management, video streaming, remote shared objects
• FluorineFX – remoting, data messaging, data management (partial)
• Visual Studio plugins for Flex (you can use these plugins to develop Flex applications in the Microsoft Visual Studio; both are free):
  • Tofino from Ensemble
  • Amethyst from Sapphire Steel

Ruby on Rails:

• WebORB for Ruby on Rails – remoting
• RubyAMF (Open Source) – remoting

Python:

• PYAMF – remoting
• DjangoAMF – remoting
• AmFast – AMF0/AMF3 encoder/decoder for Python. Core encoder and decoder are written in C, so it’s around 18x faster than PyAmf

Utils:

• as3corelib – library that contains a number of classes and utilities for working with ActionScript 3 (include classes for MD5 and SHA 1 hashing, Image encoders, and JSON serialization as well as general String, Number and Date APIs)
• as3xls – package to read and write Excel files (it supports reading text, numbers, formulas, and dates from Excel version 2.x-2003 and writing text, numbers, and dates)

Uncategorized

• RIAlity – an advanced arquitecture for Flex and JEE with tooling (Eclipse Plugins) that allows to be more productive and deliver better RIA products
• Gaia Framework – open-source front-end Flash Framework for AS3 and AS2
• Degrafa (Open Source) – declarative graphics framework for Flex
• TLFX (MLP 1.1 license) -  built on top of Text Layout Framework, it is a library for rendering HTML/CSS in Flash applications
• UML4AS – UML Editor for ActionScript and Flex. Support code generating, reverse engineering, round trips.