Drupal and-flex-drupal camp

Building Drupal
modules with Flex
Replace with
a graphic
White Master
5.5” Tall & 4.3” Wide

Mihai Corlan
Platform Evangelist, Adobe Systems
Twi er: mcorlan
Drupal Camp 2010, Timisoara
Copyright 2010 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved. Adobe con dential. 1

Agenda

  What is the Flex framework?
  Why use Flex framework with Drupal?
  Fx Gallery: A Drupal module for displaying pictures
  Q&A

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What is the Flex framework?


Flex Framework

Application Framework
Open Source
Packaged as an SDK:
•  MXML/AS3 languages
•  compilers/debuggers
•  Rich Components Library
Flex Framework

In the Web Browser On the Desktop

Flash Player Adobe AIR
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Flex’s rich components library

Controls Layout Navigators

Charts

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Developers Tools for building Flex apps

  If you are the text editor type guy, you can use the free Flex SDK
  If you prefer working with IDEs, you can use Flash Builder 4

Flash Builder 4

•  Built on the Eclipse platform
•  Supports Mac OS and Windows
•  Standalone version and plug-in version
•  Free for Students/Professors
•  60-day trial installation
•  Can be installed with PDT, Zend Studio…

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Flash Builder Free License for all of you!!!!

  h ps://freeriatools.adobe.com/ exevent
  Event Code: DrupalCamp

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Still what is Flex…

…and what’s good for?


Rich Internet Applications

One of the easiest way to build RIA is using Flex

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RIA brings the best of the two worlds

WEB DESKTOP

Reach Rich

RIA & Flex
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Examples of Flex apps


Why Drupal and Flex?


Drupal + Flex

Real Time
Flash
Messaging
Expressiveness

Live Video/Audio
Streaming
Real Time
Collaboration
Sky is the limit
Augmented
Reality

P2P &
Multicasting

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Flash Player & AIR 2 on mobile phones

+

Flash Player 10.1 and Adobe AIR are coming
to Android this year!

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Fx Gallery

Building a Drupal module with Flex


What is Fx Gallery

  It is an image gallery module for Drupal created with Flex
  It doesn’t have any dependencies
  It has 2 views: a widget and a gallery view
  e gallery view supports full screen mode
  It aggregates pictures from the local Drupal installations, Flickr,
or Picasa
  It is Open Source and thus additional features can be added by
the community

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Demo time

Fx Gallery in action


e making oﬀ of Fx Gallery


Tools

We used:
  Illustrator
  Flash Builder
  Eclipse PDT

  We started with prototypes created in Illustrator
  en we used Flash Builder / Eclipse PDT to write the PHP / Flex
code

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Frameworks & libraries

  We used ve ActionScript libraries:
  For Flickr h p://code.google.com/p/as3 ickrlib/
  For Picasa h p://code.google.com/p/picasa ashapi/
  For XML-RPC communication
h p://sf.net/projects/xmlrpc ash
  Tweening library
h p://blog.greensock.com/overwritemanager/
  As3corelib library h p://code.google.com/p/as3corelib/
  We used Display Shelf component for cover ow view (Ely
Green eld)

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Flex – Drupal communication

  e Flex client communicates with Drupal using XML-RPC
services
  We store in the database few information:
  Local albums names
  Local pictures information (name, date)
  Comments for the local pictures
  Flickr and Picasa accounts (username and API key for Flickr)
  Module se ings (colors, size, etc)

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PHP code

  ere is not much PHP code
  Installation script (creating the tables, thumbnail folder)
  Hooks for default entries (Administer …)
  Functions for reading/storing information regarding local albums, Flickr
and Picasa accounts etc

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Ge ing pictures from Flickr/Picasa

  e client makes requests to the cloud services in order to
retrieve:
  Available albums
  Picture information (title, date, URL)
  Picture bits

All this information are not routed through Drupal web server, so
there is no bandwidth cost or server loading while watching
pictures from Flickr or Picasa

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Work ows for building Flex apps

Create the Design in
Photoshop or Illustrator

Transform it into a Flex app
In Flash Catalyst

Add the business logic
In Flash Builder

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App in a Week Webinar – June 7th-10th

You can read more and nd the link for signing in on my blog
corlan.org

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Q & A time!

  Try Flash Builder and Flash Catalyst:
h p://www.adobe.com/go/ ashbuilder
h p://www.adobe.com/go/ ashcatalyst
  Fx Gallery page:
h p://corlan.org/creating-drupal-modules-with- ex/fx-gallery-drupal-module/
  Ge ing up to speed with Flex:
h p://www.adobe.com/devnet/ ex/
  Happy to hear your feedback
  Looking for contributors

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ank you! Replace with
a graphic
White Master
5.5” Tall & 4.3” Wide

ank You!
mihai.corlan@adobe.com
h p://corlan.org
Twi er: mcorlan


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Restaurant Menu – Take 1

  Dish #1
Water 150 ml, salt 2 gr, sugar 2 gr, 1 onion, 6 tomatoes, 1 red pepper, 1
spoon of olive oil, 1 spoon of vinegar

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Restaurant Menu – Take 2

  Gazpacho (traditional Spanish tomato soup) – served cold
Ingredients: Tomatoes, Onion, Red Pepper, Olive Oil, Vinegar, Salt
Note: You can see this dish below or have a taste at the bar.

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Drupal and-flex-drupal camp

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