What is the best way for Adobe Flex to interact with Java?

Question

I am currently working on a project for a school that will be a webapp, where gui will be programmed in Adobe Flex and the backend will be programmed in java, possibly as servlets running on Tomcat ...

I mainly work on the backend, and the other guy in my group leads the Flex stuff.

He is convinced that in order to communicate with Java-code, he will need to jump through all kinds of hoops. I got the impression that you could just request a servlet and display the response in the application?

I really couldn’t find a good Flex documentation (I don’t look like that), I just wondered if it is as difficult as it does.

Any resources / comments are welcome.

Thanks!

Answer 1

Blaze Data Services is the way to go. You register the MessageBroker servlet in web.xml, which acts as the front controller for your other services.

http://opensource.adobe.com/wiki/display/blazeds/BlazeDS/

http://livedocs.adobe.com/blazeds/1/blazeds_devguide/

http://livedocs.adobe.com/blazeds/1/javadoc/

Answer 2

As stated in cliff.meyers, BlazeDS is definitely what you want for a Java server. It goes well with Flex.

Regarding Flex documentation, Adobe has a ton of free video tutorials on the Internet, and official Flex language help will also be helpful.

Answer 3

There is also a U-key distribution kit containing a military sample file that can be deployed to a web server to feel some of Blaze's capabilities.

Answer 4

You can use Red5 , an alternative to Adobe FMS for 100% Java.