Welcome

Welcome to our blog about all kind of topics that are related to software development. We blog about:

SOA, BPM, EDA, ECM and all the other buzz words. Beware some post might not be so common as you think. We are not scared to go against main stream thoughts.

Technologies like java, maven, springframework, OSGi and front end technologies and frameworks like jQuery, DWR, Flex.

Finally to make this happen we need tools and of course a Mac (well some of us do). So we blog about that as well.

Technorati

Add to Technorati Favorites

Linked in

We now have a linked in group, join the group if you are a regular reader and want to see who else reads this blog.

Doing flex with maven

This is a very short item. In my last few posts I have done some flex things. For most of them I was still using a bit of ant integrated with maven or even not integrated at all. Some days a go I was directed to this sample on the adobe developer connection. The [...]

Integration spring security (Acegi) and flex 3 the sequel

flexlogo.png

In my previous blog post : integrating flex 3 with spring security I made a good effort to create a nice flex 3 application and integrate authentication and authorization with spring security. A few days a go I received a trackback from sven. Curious as I am I started reading the material he provided and especially the other links he mentioned. That made me think about my own solution. To be honest I think I did not really do a good job. It works, but still not optimal for most of the flex situations.

In my previous post I already mentioned the problem of sessions that are closed and exception handling with respect to security. In this article I am looking at the available mechanisms for security in flex. In this post I explain why I am not really using the flex or better BlazeDS security mechanisms and what you probably should use them for.

If this made you curious enough, read on. If you have questions, remarks or improvements, do not hesitate to use the comments feature of this blog item.

Continue reading Integration spring security (Acegi) and flex 3 the sequel

Integrating flex 3 with spring security (formerly known as Acegi)

flexlogo.pngThis blog item show a way of doing security, after some additional experience I consider this method as being non optimal. The server side does not change a lot (spring security configuration), but the client does. I explain my current solution is this blog post:Integration spring security and flex 3 the sequel/

This article is actually about two things. It explains the basic steps to use the new spring security version 2 library in a java (web) application. I am going to show the basic configuration as well as web resource authorization and bean methods authorization. The other part is the integration of flex with spring security. I am going to show how to use authentication from within flex 3 using the spring security back end. After that I’ll show a service used from within flex through blazeds to ask for the roles a logged in user has. Using these roles I am going to hide buttons to actions non admin users must not use. Like the create new book.springlogo.pngIn short this article shows the complete picture of an application using flex 3, blazeds, spring security to authenticate users and authorize actions.

Read on if you want to learn about the integration of these frameworks.

Continue reading Integrating flex 3 with spring security (formerly known as Acegi)

Creating a Flex 3 DataGrid component with backend filtering

flexlogo.pngPreviously I have written an article about integrating flex with spring. In this article I explained the steps to take when creating a flex 3 application that calls the back end implemented using spring. To enable flex to do this, I used the blazeDS technology. The theory is not very hard, the biggest problems you’ll face are hibernate problems with lazy initialization etc. While creating an application using flex I was amazed there is no standard component for filtering data in a DataGrid. Since I am using such a component based on ajax technology I wanted to have it in flex as well. After a shot search I came across actually nothing. So I decided to create a solution for myself. I do want to stress it does not have the flexibility you usually require from a standard component.

Requirements

  • Input fields should be on top of each column.
  • Filter should be implemented on the back end.

Constraints

  • No drag able columns are supported

Read on to find out how we implemented these requirements into a custom component for flex3 using the spingframework at the back end.

Continue reading Creating a Flex 3 DataGrid component with backend filtering

Integrating Flex3 and Springframework using BlazeDS and intelliJ

springlogo.pngThose who read articles here regularly know by know I use the springframework a lot. It is a very nice framework for creating server side code. Also the spring-mvc project is something I have used a lot. Still it does not help you enough to create those catchy looking graphical user interfaces. Therefore I have working with frameworks like: Google Web Toolkit, Wicket and smaller ajax frameworks like jQuery, DWR, etc. They all have there ways of integrating with springframework. So I write the business functions using the springframework and I can create multiple different user interfaces on top of it. There is at least one tool/framework missing in my list. Well this post is going to change that.

adobelogo.pngThis post is about FLEX from Adobe. Flex is a very nice framework to create these flashy looking user interfaces with a very rich user interaction experience. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could combine this technology with the so well known server side technology called springframework. Adobe has launched a new product called BlazeDS which is perfectly capable of calling spring managed beans from a flex front end application.

In this post I am going to show you al the steps to create a flex front end with a button to load a bunch of data from the server. This bunch of data is coming from a spring managed bean. The following image gives a schematic view of the application

ComponentFlexSpring.png

Continue reading to see all the detailed steps.

Continue reading Integrating Flex3 and Springframework using BlazeDS and intelliJ