Java and Flex Integration Bible [Paperback]

Matthew Keefe (Author), Charles A. Christiansen (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0470400749 | ISBN-13: 978-0470400746 | Publication Date: March 3, 2009 | Edition: 1

Providing you with invaluable information for delivering rich, cross-platform Internet applications within the enterprise and across the web, this book shows you how to fully integrate Java and Flex. Pages of examples, step-by-step instructions, and from-the-field techniques guide you through the creation of your first Java/Flex applications.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

Marry Java and Flex to live happily ever after in Web development bliss

Whether you're a designer who wants to master programming or a creative developer seeking to broaden your skills beyond coding, now you have two powerful tools and a valuable guide to get you there. Thanks to the step-by-step instructions and practical examples in this in-depth book, you'll quickly get up to speed on relational databases, learn the ins and outs of Java and Flex, and discover the art and science of mashups by mixing code and graphics to create custom interfaces.

• Set up the Java development environment and configure Flex

• Send data from Flex and start writing Java Web applications

• Create a storefront server application with Java

• Develop a storefront client application with Flex

• Connect Java and Flex to create a real-time messaging system

• Configure Cascading Style Sheets for custom interfaces

• Master advanced concepts, including enterprise-level development

About the Author

Matthew Keefe is a new-media designer and developer with a strong background in application development for the Web and offline. Matt is the author of the Flash and PHP Bible.

Charles A. Christiansen Jr. is a senior software engineer who currently uses Java and Flex 3. Charles has written applications that run the gamut — from heavy client Java applications that use RMI over dialup to fast, lightweight Web applications that use Spring and Hibernate.

Product Details

• Paperback: 552 pages
• Publisher: Wiley; 1 edition (March 3, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0470400749
• ISBN-13: 978-0470400746
• Product Dimensions: 7.4 x 1.1 x 9.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,320,071 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Beginning Java and Flex Integration, August 11, 2009

By 

yoyosm (germany) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Java and Flex Integration Bible (Paperback)

"a bible is meant to target a large audience" claims the author, indeed... but this book targets only the beginners! In my humble oppinion a bible should try to cover all the topics on a subject not only the basic ones. there are a lot of integration topics missing in this so called "bible" like: integrating Flex with a Java Seam based backend, Flex client authentication to a Java backend server, Flex MVC with Cairngorm + Java, how to secure your Flex application (btw any webstore is a secure application).
Short resumé: this book is structured into 3 parts, first part starts provides a lot of "how to" + screen shots on: Java, Eclipse, Ant installation -not so sure if those topics belong to a bible related on Flex-Java Integration, and it ends with an application about Flex.
Second part starts ok, first 3 chapter provide the basics about how to connect flex to java, how to develop a java web application with flex front-end, how to write JUnit and Flex Unit tests which so far is OK, but chapter 8 introduces databases and provides AGAIN a lot of screen shots of how to install MySQL (?!) there is also a screen with the MySQL download website!! - I agree a DB is almost a must for todays applications but wasn't this chapter supposed to belong to the first part where there also the other install procedures, next chapter introduces hibernate but never mentions about the hbm2ddl.auto property which if is set to create or update then hibernate can auto create the DB tables instead of manually creating tables.
Third part promises to teach reader how to build advanced flex-java applications, but it simply fails! The authors continue their "writing with screen shots" style (I think their goal was to provide at least one screen shot per page for e.g. chapter 8 has 28 pages but 32 pictures/ screen shots, even if they repeat the screen shots) despite of what this part claims. For e.g. they provide again screen shots of how to connect to your MySQL server (ch .12 page 310) even if the same screen shots was provided in (ch 8. page 219), figure 8.16 page 220 is the same with figure 12.2 on page 311. I mean if the reader learns from ch. 8 how to login to his MySQL DB, how to define a new schema, how to create tables with MySQL GUI tools why do you repeat the same things in ch. 12?! why don't you modify your hibernate.cfg.xml file and add a line like this:
< property name = " hbm2ddl.auto " > " update < / property >
and say that now hibernate will take care of creating the tables? wasn't this part supposed to be an advanced part?
the good part is that the book provides also ant scripts of how to build the example code besides the eclipse build

Conclusion: The real title should be: "Beggining Java and Flex Integration" or "Java and Flex Integration for non-programmers". If you are an absolute beginner - who never installed ant, eclipse, mysql - then you can buy this book, if you have just a little experience on the above mentioned technologies than my advice is to search another book or google is your best friend (for e.g. you can find better tutorials on Flex + BlazeDS + Spring + hibernate)

9 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Book with Qualifications, April 12, 2009

By 

Michael J. Bullock (Neptune Beach, FL USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Java and Flex Integration Bible (Paperback)

This is a great book. I've been designing and developing enterprise level software systems for about 10 years. I have a lot of experience with java web services and just wrapped up a large CRM implementation using PHP server side and the EXTJS javascript library on the client side. I've not done any work with Flex and I picked up a copy of this book to get some insights into how it works. Over the years, I've read a lot of books about software languages and software design. The Java and Flex Integration bible is better than most books.

This book will teach you the following things:

-How to use java and flex to develop MVC patterned web applications. If you are designing web-based applications you owe it to yourself to understand the MVC (model view controller) paradigm. I'm not evangelical when it comes to patterns, but MVC is proven and you should know how to do it.

-How to incorporate an ORM (object relational mapping) layer into your designs. The book uses the java hibernate library to accomplish this. I'm not a huge fan of hibernate, but the concept of abstracting your data layer is important.

-How to us object interfaces and abstract classes to create extensible and durable code libraries.

-How to use modern development environments like eclipse.

-How to use build and test tools like Ant and JUnit.

-How to leverage pre-package libraries like hibernate, spring framework, JMS, etc.

Now for some qualifications. This is not a typical "bible" sort of book. If you are an advanced developer looking for top to bottom coverage of flex, you are going to be disappointed. If you've done a lot of pattern based development, or already have lots of experience with frameworks and the various tools covered in the book, you will find the detailed play-by-play coverage a bit tiresome. It is also true that some of the content in this book (specifically the step-by-step instructions on how to perform various operations with different tools) will become dated pretty rapidly as the tools continue to evolve and change.

You will not find any advanced ninja like tricks in this book, but after 10 years writing software, I'm not particularly impressed with that sort of stuff anyway. I _am_ impressed by clean design based on established patterns and best practices. I respect developers who understand that the real goal is to create simple, durable, and extensible solutions for complex problems. The authors of this book are the latter sort of developers and they do a good job of imparting some important and timeless lessons to their readers.

Based on these qualifications, this book may not be right for everyone. If you are a novice or mid-level developer, there is a lot you will learn between the covers of Java and Flex Integration Bible. If you are an experienced developer you will see some familiar and time tested concepts interpreted in a context you may not be familiar with.

In sum, this is a good book. I enjoyed it and learned some things I didn't know. I hope others enjoy the book as much as I did.

3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Luke warm, April 15, 2009

By 

agent Smith - See all my reviews

This review is from: Java and Flex Integration Bible (Paperback)

I am luke warm about this book. It seems to have missed its audience in placing itself midway between the beginner and advanced levels.

It's great for a beginner in that it's very detailed in installing the necessary software and getting going but at the same time it can be confusing as it has a significant amount of code errors and omissions that make compiling the applications at times difficult (down to misspellings of "nww" instead of "new" or pieces of code left out of a function inside a script block - i.e. page 270 ProductEditor.mxml). So if you don't know how to correct them you're stuck.

I am quite well versed in Flex but very little in Java so I was thrilled at the option of learning all the details of the inner workings of Flex and Java integration (especially with BlazeDS). Unfortunately there is a lot left to be inferred by the authors just where you thought that everything is properly configured and it would compile properly. I still have to go through the advanced examples but this book is no "Adobe Flex 3: Training from the Source" book. I wished they had done one complex project from beginning to the end, explained in detail instead of small simpler training parts before getting to the complex application. I started very thrilled and ended up frustrated. Too bad because there is definitely a huge need for clarity in this fairly new field (Flex with Java).