That is all.

Download SWX AS3 Connecter Alpha 4.zip (590kb)

The Connecter code has been changed accordingly.

• Eid in the Square
• Islam Is Peace
• Eid in the Park 

And to liven this post up a bit, here’s a parody trailer I helped make in 24 hours:

Changelog

• Randomised LocalConnection IDs - now running two movies that both use this connecter works
• Say where the connector is stored - just pass the url when you create the SWX object:

swx = new SWX("http://example.com/connecter.swf");

Same bugs are before, Flex compatible version is in the works

Download here

So whenever you’re iterating (Enumerable.each() in this case) check that you haven’t got a superfluous comma in the object that you’re iterating through.
Normally this gets caught as a syntax error, but, because this code was being AJAXed, this didn’t happen and an obscure runtime error occured, buried deep within Prototype (inside 10 levels of anonymous functions)

Firefox it seems is much more lenient than IE in this case as it didn’t throw any error at all, simply ignoring the comma. Again the age old debate about fixing broken code rises. I think IE got it more right in this case. Markup (HTML) is a different issue - that should be corrected (though use XHTML whenever possible), but when it comes to code you need the extra safety. In a perfect world code thats AJAXed would also throw syntax errors.

I wanted to use SWX for an upcoming Flex project so I spent yesterday knocking up this AS3 SWX Connecter that currently works, mostly.

What is it?

Essentially its two files:

• SWX.as - an AS3 compatible version of the SWX Object that mimics the core library one (source)
• connecter.swf - an AS2 SWF that loads the data (source)

It is not a full port of SWX - it still uses AVM1 bytecode in the background, however it can be used with absolutely no code changes to SWX related code.

What’s new?

Callback functions are AS3 (say hello to Array.foreach()!) and so the scope doesn’t need to be specified:
result: resultHandler and result: [this, resultHandler] both work.

The core SWX library has been slightly modified to make it compatible with AS3 and to make it play nicer with the connecter. Changes to SWX.as, ExternalAsset.as and LoadManager.as.

See it in action

Here’s an AS3 version of Aral’s revolutionary number adding app:

AS2 Source | AS3 Source | Compare

How does it work?
LocalConnections are used to communicate between the connect SWF and the application, however the new SWX class abstracts away all of this, leaving just the original SWX functions. Thanks to Nolan Butcher for the starting point.

A Zip You Say?

Here: SWX AS3 Connecter ALPHA.zip (575kb)

Includes:

• New SWX.as
• connecter.swf and connecter.fla
• Modified SWX library
• Add Numbers - AS3 style

What’s wrong?

• SWX.prepare() cannot be accessed - but who uses it anyway??
• Setting debug: true breaks it - having looked through the SWX code, I still can’t figure out why
• Does not work in Flex because the LocalConnection does not connect when the connecter is loaded via a Loader. Only way currently is to use a SWFLoader Component (creating a SWFLoader instance in AS does not work) but nobody wants SWFLoader MXML in their source code, defeats the point of abstracting everything to a library - maybe make a SWX component.

Anyone have any ideas on these?

TODO

• Randomise LC ids
• Allow user to specify location of connecter.swf

Or just do $this->data[’Model’][’Model’] = array($id); before you save().

Applies to CakePHP 1.1, may not be relevant to 1.2.

A bit of Google turned me to this page, so it was just trailing whitespace.

Which is just annoying when you’ve spent 30 mins debugging a bug that seemed to suddenly appear with no code changes. Now that’s scary because you’ve no idea where to start. I’m sure it wouldn’t hurt to have the webserver strip trailing whitespace so this sort of thing doesn’t happen. Unless, of course, you write your web applications in Whitespace

The only slightly interesting part is the header - it’s got all of my display pictures to date and it updates!

So I go to move my contacts back over from my computer. Ho Hum, oh look it’s failed, repeatedly, and I’ve finally given up on SE PC Suite. It’s been a long and frustrating journey, starting out with the P800 version. It’s buggy, crashes a lot, has multiple components that confuse me and is just bad in many different and stupid ways. So having given up on it, I did what any self respecting geek would do, which is overkill.

I set up a SBS 2003 server so I can use my phone’s shiny new ActiveSync support to sync my contacts, emails, RSS feeds, notes, calenders and all that jazz. This is much better than what I had before which was a pidge-podge. Before my desktop, phone and laptop, would sync separately with my multiple email accounts (which is a nightmare) and would sync with each other for everything else. Many a time items have been lost, overwritten and corrupted. Now all of my devices have a common source and all is well with the world once again. I even have web access to it.

I’m considering whether to move my computers into the domain (which I named lolCorp) and have it managed by the server (which I named lolEnforcer). There’s no REAL reason to, i.e. I’ve not yet found a reason apart from its impressive (in some circles) to run your home network on a domain.

Also since the mangoSix internal server gave up last week (it’s CPU temp would constantly rise when it was booted up until it reached 95C, where it would shutdown instantaneously) I’m considering whether to move it over to the SBS server. Moving over the configuration wouldn’t be a problem, just the repository history).

I leave you with a picture of my new workspace after The Great Move of Last Week (I moved from the box room to the lovely newly converted garage):