I'm in the process of evaluating the Feathers UI framework as a replacement for our current Flex mobile app (there are just too many limitations of Flex, mostly concerned with performance on retina devices) and coming from Flex, there are some issues I have with a pure AS project.
One big issue seems to be the use of web services. I frequently use mx.rpc classes and interfaces such as IResponder, AsyncToken, and HTTPService, which obviously aren't available without the Flex SDK.
How come that this isn't part of AIR and remains part of the Flex SDK and how do I get rid of this issue? Are there equivalents or do I have to make a hack and import the corresponding SWCs manually?
For a non-Flex project that needs to communicate with a web service, you need two files from the Flex framework: rpc.swc and framework.swc.
You just add the SWCs to your project the same way you would any other SWCs. No MXML, no hacking necessary. I've used them in Flash CS projects and FlashDevelop AS3 projects.
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I've already written some backend *.dll files that I intend to use in a project. I need to visualize a simulation of the code, for which I intend to use charts and graphs from Chart.JS, by using it along with TideSDK for a desktop application.
I have no clue on how to call the C libraries via JS though. And I want to avoid creating wrapper classes in Python and going through that circuitous route. Any other options? Or are there any alternatives when trying to create an HTML/CSS/JS desktop application connected to a backend C/C++ library? Will AppJS make things easier?
TideSDK is capable of extension with modules that can be compiled and included in its runtime. It was written to be extended but I would recommend waiting for TideKit. TideSDK is a bit old and setting up a toolchain could be problematic at this point.
We've been investing in a broader vision with TideKit that is getting ready for release. You will be able to extend it with native modules and you won't need to wait too much longer to see what we've been up to. http://youtu.be/aE7gN-d0GhUthat
If you have started anything with TideSDK, you will be able to migrate your code easily to TideKit. The ability to work with with native or JavaScript modularity, and to develop for all screens from a single project code base is where all our efforts have been going.
Note that AppJS was discontinued earlier this year. An alternative is writing C extensions in node through node-webkit. Note that if you are going cross platform on this and you needed OSX as well, you cannot achieve Apple AppStore compliance with node-webkit due to private APIs as a result of its port of webkit.
I would like to create a cross-platform serial read/write application to communicate with my mbed electronics project. I cannot decide whether to code this application in Chrome packed app or c++(using the openFrameworks framework). I have more experience coding in html and javascript than I do in c++, but I wouldn't mind learning c++. What drew me to the packed app idea was the ability to write code in html and javascript. Eventually my project will be open-sourced. What are some of the pros and cons of using packaged apps versus c++?
C++ can be used to do chip level programming and to manipulate the chips that require lot of coding in order to implement the functionality of your desire.
Packaged apps deliver an experience as capable as a native app, but as safe as a web page. Just like web apps, packaged apps are written in HTML5, JavaScript, and CSS. But packaged apps look and behave like native apps, and they have native-like capabilities that are much more powerful than those available to web apps.
Packaged apps would be a modern concept and it would be a better option because it gives more importance to your project when the reviewers of your project find that you are using a new concept.
I'm working-on in one app that I need for setting-up embedded devices, the app must be cross plattform because it will be used in Windows, OSX and Linux.
I'm developing it in java using RXTX library that is tested and work fine in the three plattforms.
I am planning to use yui or jquery ui as front end for native c++ applications. I found no bindings present for this purpose. Will it be feasible/possible to do this ? If it is so, then how shall i proceed? please suggest advice.thanks
#rwik - I can see your point and desire to do what you intend and I would presume it to be a wise move to be making at this point in time considering the vast facilities browsers bring to the table as well as other aspects... I know we are in September now and I have come across this pretty late, but this is also for others who have a similar problem...
As far as I know, descending from JavaScript in to C++ is pretty murky, mostly due to the heterogenous nature of Javascript engines [Rhino, Tracemonkey, Spidermonkey, V8, Caracan,Charka, etc] employed by different browsers. But there are indeed ways to do this - depending on how dirty you want to get your hands and, indeed, on your abilities...
If you were to go with Google as a browser, you should take a look at projects such as cproxyv8 - http://code.google.com/p/cproxyv8/ or v8-juice - http://code.google.com/p/v8-juice/ which both offer interesting facilities...
My preference however is with Mozilla - simply because of XML User-Interface Language (XUL) which, if you do not know, allows you to speedily create your own user interfaces by giving direct access to its layout engine. I.e., you can even do away with the browser look and have your own independent layout while still having all browser facilities at your disposal.
With respect to C++/Javascript interaction - projects should exist for all alternatives - it pays to check.
I wish you good luck if you haven't already solved this problem.
I'd recommend QT instead.
However since native C++ has nothing to do with GUI I'm going to assume you are making a library in C++. However Yui is basically just JavaScript as is jQuery. So if you're asking can a web page or script be a C++ application the answer is not really.
What you could do is create a web service which uses your C++ library and exposes an interface for your web based application to call it indirectly.
One way to accomplish this is to embed WebKit into your application and provide your custom C++ functionality via a plugin. Both the WebKit framework on OSX and the Chromium Embedded Framework on Windows allow this style of application development. This allows you to write a UI using local Javascript/HTML files without the need for a webserver.
There are no direct bindings in JQuery and YUI because these libraries run in a web browser. Thus unless you’re planning to write your own browser plugins, the integration with the C++ will happen at the webserver that serves the data to the browser.
You could feed the data from your C++ code directly into JQuery/YUI by building web services directly in C++. But you might want to build a web application that will be serving your JQuery/YUI pages and that act as user interface controller (like in the MVC pattern). Web application languages like Java, PHP, etc. all have ways to call native code. Java has JNDI and in PHP you build extensions that link to C++ code.
For a current project, we're designing a client desktop application that parses text files and interfaces with a web based database.
So far we've split the project into parts:
(Third-Party Program) -> (Our Desktop Client) -> (Our Parsing Library #1 and #2) -> (Our Web Server) -> (Our Verification Library) -> (Our Database)
We've hit confusion when it comes to choosing the correct way (and the best language) to make these pieces work together.
The third-party program's output is a simple text file, and we're just parsing it into a SQL-esque format for insertion into our database after verifying the numbers are in a certain range.
The first question we have is regarding the client language itself. We're planning on writing the parser libraries in C++ as they're just mostly text management. Our desktop client needs to be cross-platform for Windows and Mac. Currently we're leaning towards writing this in Java using Swing and the JNI. However, we realize there's a lot of hate for Java and that we'd have to worry about bundling in the JRE.
Is Java a good choice in this situation? Our other options seem to be writing this also in C++ using something like Qt for the GUI, or going platform specific and writing the windows version in .NET and then a Mac specific version. Our Windows community is the vast majority of users.
Our second issue is connecting this client with our web server. Originally we were just going to use an http POST to upload the file. We could also FTP the file which seems like overkill. We started to explore web services but were not sure if a web service could handle large amounts of text data.
Is there an easier way to do this? Everything is text, so it's no problem to send them in chunks or one giant string. If we go the web services route, will that effect our language choice for the desktop client?
There are definitely hundreds of ways to handle something like this, but most of these concepts are new for us. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Qt is an excellent choice and as it's native C++ it will be easy to integrate with your parsers too. Why write two versions when a single Qt version will run fine on both platforms with native look and feel? Depending on the license you choose you can even statically link Qt if you're concerned about deployment complexity.
A web service would generally have no problem handling large amounts of text and pretty much any language will interact with it easily assuming basic network I/O functionality. Depending on the language you will probably be able to find libraries that do most of the work for you, assuming it's not already supported natively.
As you say, there are many different ways to do what you want to achieve. There is no right or wrong way but obviously some designs will suit your needs better than others.
I havent used flash or action script much. I am planning a small project that i'd like to be online via flash but i'd like to reuse the code in my c/c++ projects
Is there a script language i can use? i am thinking lua or python. After googling i found flua which is incomplete and jython. Can i use java in flash? would it be a good idea to use python in java which is ran with flash?
Have you taken a look at Alchemy?
With Alchemy, Web application developers can now reuse hundreds of millions of lines of existing open source C and C++ client or server-side code on the Flash Platform. Alchemy brings the power of high performance C and C++ libraries to Web applications with minimal degradation on AVM2. The C/C++ code is compiled to ActionScript 3.0 as a SWF or SWC that runs on Adobe Flash Player 10 or Adobe AIR 1.5.
Have you looked at Haxe? http://www.haxe.org
The Haxe compiler can produce swf files, JavaScripts and other, with a language that resembles ActionScript or JavaScript more or less, depending on what language details you care about.
Here's this nice teaser from the haxe site: "Currently in testing, with the right build of Haxe from Hugh Sanderson, you can now output your Haxe applications to pure C++ source code, complete with makefiles."
But no, I don't know about using Java inside a Flash. You mean the Flash app executing Java while it's running? or using Java to create a Flash app?
There's no way to embed Java within a Flash movie. If you're creating a SWF that will display in a browser then you're restricted to Actionscript. You could create a Java applet, load it in the same page, and use javascript to communicate between the two, though I wouldn't recommend that.
If you're using a projector to create an EXE then you may be able to load and use C++ dlls, though I've never attempted this.