I'm getting started with Flex and initially installed the Adobe environment (Flex Builder 3) and later found out that they're starting to call it Flash Builder 4.
Anyway since I'm very new to this technology and I have to leave Flex Builder 3 anyway, I'm trying to find out if there are any advantages to developing with Adobe's Flash Builder 4 (adobe's commercial IDE) vs. Eclipse (which Adobe seems to also heavily support, they make and support a special plugin for it).
My main language is PHP so my end goal is to integrate Flex with PHP. It sounds like Adobe did a decent job with integration in the Flash Builder 4 release (you can choose a language and choose data services options, etc. which should make that integration smoother), but is that integration only available through their commercial Flash Builder 4 or is it also available through the plugin they release for Eclipse? I'm trying to get some advice from those who used the technology so I can make up my mind whether there's a lot of advantage using Adobe's commercial IDE vs. the very robust open source Eclipse IDE. Other aspects I may not have considered are also welcome.
Note: I use php without a framework, and I keep also hearing Zend from Adobe themselves, which is kind of confusing too. I guess they're using part of the zend for remoting. Does anyone know how zend will affect my flex development environment?
Flex Builder and Flash Builder both function as Plug-ins to Eclipse, though each also comes in a "stand-alone" flavor - which is still eclipse, but with a lot of the Eclipse functionality torn out for a smaller footprint.
What you want to do is pretty simple - get eclipse set up, install PDT or whatever your favorite PHP plug-in is and then install Flash/Flex Builder into that same instance of Eclipse. Make sure when you download FB you choose to download the "Plug-in" version instead of the stand-alone version. When you go to install it, it'll ask you where you want to install it - pick a location, and hit next. It will then ask you if you want to plug-in to an existing instance of Eclipse or use the bundled Eclipse (at least Flash Builder comes with a Bundled eclipse). Opt to select an eclipse version and point it toward the Eclipse install that has your PHP coder plugged into it.
If all goes well, once it' done you can open Eclipse and then switch views between Flash Builder and PDT all within one instance of Eclipse. I do this with Aptana, it's very handy to be able to do your HTML, PHP and AS3 all in one editor.
Good luck!
Also [edit]:
Adobe promotes Zend because of a Zend plug-in called ZendAMF. ZendAMF is the spiritual successor to AMFPHP - basically, with a little bit of setup you can create a dev environment where you are able to call PHP functions right from your AS3 code. You can set up a ZendAMF Class, for instance, called getUsers() which then queries your DB and pulls out a list of Users. You can use that to populate PHP ValueObjects, and then it will pass those VO's back to Flex in binary (much, much faster than XML) and if you have it set up correctly they will be data-typed as AS3 Value Objects of the same type.
This is very useful because it's all very transparent - you can then write an AS3 function called getUsers() which returns an Array of value objects, set it up to quietly call your PHP which calls the database, and have it return a value as though it were just all AS3 from start to finish. A bit tricky to set up, but once you're rolling there's really no going back! :)
I'm pretty sure they're actually the same thing - this was certainly the case with Flex Builder 3, and I'm assuming is the case with Flash Builder 4 as well.
The plugin is there for if you have an existing installation of eclipse and want to just add in Flash Builder to that. But if you don't already have it, the Flash Builder stand-alone installation includes eclipse, pre-built with the plugin.
As for Zend - Adobe is currently collaborating over aspects of the Zend Framework to improve integration with your Flex Apps. Zend have there own eclipse plugin called Zend Studio for building Zend Framework apps, which does integrate with the Flash Builder plugin. I've not used it myself, but from what I hear it's not that brilliant. You can still use Flex without any Zend stuff if that's the way you work.
Hope this helps.
You should also check IntelliJ which has support for Flex and PHP. Apparently it's way better than FlexBuilder/Eclipse. We're using Eclipse with the FlexBuilder plugin but are looking to switch over.
You can download and use the Flash Builder Standard program for free if you're a student or unemployed, so I would grab that. The premium version does have some nice to haves like Network Monitoring and better code generation tools.
The standard package will install the Zend PHP engine for remote calls if you use PHP, which is a framework that allows you to write your services in PHP, then make calls in Flash through the Zend engine to PHP. It's pretty useful, and they will easily pull properly formatted PHP services into the data view (a window showing your available service calls).
You can also use other frameworks like AMFPHP.
Overall, the only real differences between the Adobe Flash Builder and Eclipse plugin is if you upgrade to the Premium version or you prefer a concentrated lightweight version of eclipse tailored specifically to Flash (the Builder).
Related
Actually, I am working on a project with Laravel5 (laravel.com)
someone who is working on another project with SailsJS (sailsjs.org) asked me why I am still using PHP. I should work with nodejs (sails), because PHP would be a language would be going to die.
Well, what's better to use for the future.
Both are MVC frameworks
on both you can code views with Jade (see jade-lang.org)
on both you can use any database.
on both you can easily install modules (composer / npm for the backend), bower for the frontend
What's better - and an important aspect - which framework creates responds faster?
As a technical guy, i would suggest you to use sails over laravel. Its not because PHP is going to die(and it will not happen).
As far as i know, anything built on javascript would be faster.
There are lot of advantages in sails like sockets are very easy to implement so on.
When it comes to disadvantage, its only with DOCUMENTATION. For a beginner, it would become little difficult to grasp all the things.
From PHP (Synchronous) to sails(Assynchronous), it will take some time to get familiar with sails.
Make sure you understand the basics of node.js very well before you start with sails.
For more references, see this , this and this
PHP is never going to die, Choosing a technology stack all depends on application & available resource, If you have expertise in php then you will obviously take longer time building app in nodejs/sails.
I have worked on both frameworks (sailsjs & larave 5.2) and for my new project i will go with laravel because:
Laravel is pretty mature framework (was founded in 2011 and has 9K contributors)
It got builtin support for most of things like migraters, seeders, queuing system and templates.
Documentation is very good.
lots of 3rd party integration, you can integrate it with s3-buckets, dropbox any email service provider and backup services in few minutes. complete list of integrations
Disadvantage of laravel:
Socket support is poor, but you can do socket part in nodejs, and can
bridge that using REST APIS.
Mongodb support is not good.
I tried all the day to set up a Zend Framework project in Dreamweaver CS5.5. Now, after a few hours spending on google and the CS5.5 doc, i am still not able to debug a Zend Framework project in Dreamweaver:
Let's say, i have a module called "admin" in /application/modules/admin. If i try the Live View feature, Live Code, or the dynamic files discover, it fails at all.
If I try to debug the IndexController of the AdminModule, Dreamweaver always tries to render the page http://foo.bar/application/modules/admin/controllers/IndexController.php, insteadof http://foo.bar/admin[/index/index]
Is there any way to get those features working with Dreamweaver CS5.5?
Also, the include path does not work. The /public/index.php includes something like require_once 'Zend/Application.php';. Where does Dreamweaver search? He tells me that he can not find the file http://foo.bar/Zend/Application.php. Omg, srsly?
I hope there are some Dreamweaver PHP developers out there which can help me.
Btw, I am using Zend Studio at the moment and wanted to get a "quick" look into the new CS5.5 features :/
Update 16.05.2012
Little update from me. I'm currently Using PHPStorm from JetBrains. It is the best IDE I ever had. (Ecpilse/Aptana/Zend Studio/PHPDesigner). Autocomplete for nearly everything, huge plugin repository and much nice features like LESS Support, NodeJS Support, PHPUnit integration or an integrated Git Client. Give it a try. It's free for open source projects.
Dreamweaver can technically work with anything, but it's really designed to work with procedural php.
I would recommend the eclipse software with the pdt plugin or net beans. WAY better for supporting a zend framework project imo.
I'm not bagging on dreamweaver, it's a nice tool (especially for html/css), but for OO PHP programming, it's really not designed for it.
I am building a Flash, jQuery, and PHP based project which I would like to subversion from the get go. I have experience using Dreamweaver CS5's sub versioning capabilities. So, as far as the PHP and jQuery (the non-flash portion) goes, I'm pretty comfortable.
However, I would like some recommendations on how to subversion the Flash portion. I know Flash Builder has SVN capabilities, however, the flash portion isn't going to function as and RIA, but more, if you will, like a game. As far as my experience with Flash goes, this type of project will work best if done in Flash Professional. Here are the options, as I see them:
find an extension for Flash Professional which will enable SVN. Is there one???
create a "Flash Professional Project" in Flash Builder, built it in Flash Professional, and subversion with Flash Builder.
place my project within a defined site in Dreamweaver, and subversion from Dreamweaver.
I would like to avoid something like Tortoise SVN, as I have had more difficulty with that than I am up for for now. :)
Does anyone have any suggestions, or pointers as to how I can handle this?
Thank you for your time.
Well, any SVN client can handle any kind of file - you don't have to have an extension built into each piece of software you're using. The best way to do this is to put all of your project files into a folder somewhere and then using whatever SVN client you want just add that whole folder to your repo. Does that make sense? The front-end that you're using is more or less irrelevant.
I don't really understand what you are saying about TortoiseSVN, but since you are using different IDE's I would recommend you to use TortoiseSVN as the uniform interface to SVN. And IMO, TortoiseSVN is simple and powerful.
Man up and use the command line ;). Why SVN? Yes, I personally prefer it but there are other great alternatives, have a think about GIT, Mercurial and others too. Mercurial/Git have massive benefits for single developer projects. The flash file will be versioned just like everything else in there. Remember to set your ignore files appropriately to cut out all the os specific poop.
Soon as you get yourself a good versioning repository set up, it doesn't really matter what client you use. I like the one bundled with netbeans / versions or the cli.
We have to develop an specific webpage with php and up until now we have used asp.net, the problem is that we arent able to take the tipical development steps in php.
For asp.net:
Design interface (aspx/html) (With visual designer)
Create controls events (Button click, combo select etc...) (for ex. double click on x control creates the asociated click event in codebehind)
Add control/bussines logic (X button clicked-> make x control visible/enabled/change its text. Intellisense or autocompletion or so, detecting the objetcs and controls that exist in the design page)
In php there doesnt seem to be clear relation between a designed page and php code (its like striping all the intellisense in asp.net and using only response.write() to do the visual changes :S)
After some searching the model we use is WebForms asp.net (not mvc .net) so the desired option would be a framework + designer as alike as WebForms as posible...
So...is there any framework + ide that helps with this problem?
I haven't used it yet, but the NetBeans IDE provides support for PHP along with the Zend and Symfony frameworks, both of which are designed to support building web applications with the MVC pattern. NetBeans also has support for other aspects of web development - HTML, CSS, JavaScript. The only thing lacking right now is support for HTML5, but I believe that's on the roadmap.
I've edited some existing PHP with NetBeans, and it seems pretty sharp with code completion and suggestion, so I would suspect that support for these frameworks is also pretty solid.
You can use Prado Framework, this is like .Net, but on PHP, of course is not complete like .Net. Just search Prado Framework on Google and go to whatever link of the result page.
Sorry for my english, i just wanna help.
Bye.
In the end we used the VS.PHP plugin...it isnt free but at least we continue using the familiar Visual Studio IDE without reconfiguring much our development setup
Hi there I would kindly like to ask if NetBeans has any sort of GUI builder like the ones they offered for Java programming? Sorry for the noob Questions. If so, how do I install or use them? Thanks.
The only GUI Builder I know for PHP is Delphi for PHP, or it's new name RadPHP
for the new version there's a twenty video show some of it's features, you can look at them here
No it does not have this functionality as PHP does not have any GUI components built in. PHP is usually combined with HTML and CSS to render a view. Netbeans does not have a builder for HTML and CSS either so the answer is no.
There are some primitive examples of IDE's that includes GUI components. But Netbeans does not have a GUI editor or builder for PHP. Soon enough IDE developers will include some standart components since there seems to be a rising demand for visual web development. To counter balance Visual Studio, the "php"ians will retaliate somehow.
Now Netbeans version 7.3 beta support inbuilt gui builder for html5....
May be this will help us.