Written by Simon Bailey

Time for another simple IntelliJ IDEA 9 step by step guide. This time I will run through how to create a Module Library (equivalent to a Library Project in Eclipse) and then create a Flex Module in the same Project space to utilise this new Module Library. This FAQ for Eclipse users is great for understanding the slight changes in terminology i.e. Project/Module.

Written by Simon Bailey

Slowly digging through archives of stuff I have been meaning to blog and I got reminded about this little issue I noticed when I increased the row height on a Flex List component. Looking at the example below note that the list on the left has a load of white space below the final row???

Written by Simon Bailey

Myself and a mate where trying to fix why he couldn’t assign his newly created Application mxml component as the module Main Class thus preventing him from running a build. Simple oversight I noticed is that somehow the src folder had become de-selected as a Sources directory. This is easily fixed by going to the projects Module Settings > Modules > Sources and then select the src directory and then select the Sources tab at the top right of the panel:

Written by Simon Bailey

Being a long term Eclipse user there are a host of workflows that are now alien to me in IntelliJ IDEA and I am determined to blog even the simplest of new ones I discover. This one shows you how to add a swc or library of swc’s to your project and then create a Class using the newly imported libraries. I use PureMVC multicore and StateMachine swc’s as an example.

Written by Simon Bailey

I have found a neat little workflow in IntelliJ IDEA 9 to use a custom html wrapper. I found Flex Builder to be quite limiting in handling this aspect, I tend to have a very simple swfobject template which I like to use and involves me copying and pasting this into each and every project I build in Eclipse!

A HTML wrapper in Flex Builder can be modified but its restricted to a set series of options in the Flex Compiler panel which simply alters which Adobe defined template in the SDK directory is used. You could go and change the actual templates in those folders but that just doesn’t feel right. The other issue is that if you remove/add the wrapper option then your custom index.template.html gets overwritten. This is all handled much more efficiently in IntelliJ IDEA due to the ability to actually select a template from the SDK directory, it’s here that I added my own custom template (included below). Here is the process in 4 easy steps:

Written by Simon Bailey

Following uploading my latest PureMVC example to GitHub I fancied working on this new project in IntelliJ IDEA 9. As I am sure your aware IntelliJ IDEA 9 now features support for Flex and AIR and hands down is awesome. There are so many ingrained features which will make you life as a developer so much better in comparison to Eclipse. Jesse Freeman has a comprehensive lowdown on IntelliJ well worth reading.

What I wanted to show was how easy it is to pull down a copy of your GitHub Flex project into IntelliJ IDEA 9 due to the inbuilt GitHub support it provides. Prior to completing the below steps I have GitHub installed on my Mac and have setup a SSH Key (also see here). Here’s a step by step example using my SimplePMVCExample as source.

Written by Simon Bailey

For my talk tomorrow on constructing a simple PureMVC application I have uploaded the source to GitHub. This is my first proper submit to GitHub so fingers crossed it’s all gone to plan.

http://github.com/newtriks/SimplePMVCExample

For this application I also quickly put together some other resources that may be of some use to use as references to start building a Flex application. These include: + FlexUnit tests + ANT build script + ASDocs

These are put in purely as a potential starting point to get going in these areas and are not perfect, but should be useful. This provides a simple Flex application which is constructed on PureMVC with unit testing, documentation and build scripts.

Written by Simon Bailey

I recently had an ANT build.xml script and I ran into a small issue with excluding directories of classes. ASDoc won’t allow you (as far as I can see) to exclude a directory of classes, only a defined list of classes which wasn’t what I was aiming for. I found this dudes post which offered a pretty cool solution to create a fileset of classes to exclude, strip the document type attribute and then use the property id as reference to pass to the

1

-exclude-classes

argument in asdoc. I will be uploading an application shortly with this fix in place to use as a reference.

UPDATE

Here is that application mentioned above

Written by Simon Bailey

I ran into a couple of problems with the DateField when I added a custom formatted date and removal of the border for the text input. I may have overlooked something here so if someone can suggest a more appropriate solution it would be welcomed.

(a) Text shifted up losing its central vertical alignment. (b) The calendar icon did not move horizontally as the text input data changed.

Written by Simon Bailey

I am speaking on the 23rd January 2010 for Flash Midlands User Group for anyone keen on getting to grips with PureMVC:

Saturday 23rd January - 11am - 1pm - Coventry (University of Warwick) Getting started with PureMVC Simon Bailey (Newtriks.com / Adobe Community Expert)

This will be more of a hands on session constructing a simple application as I went through the concept of PureMVC and frameworks during my presentation at Flash Camp in Birmingham.