Foundation Flex for Developers: Data-Driven Applications with PHP, ASP.NET, ColdFusion, and LCDS

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Product Description

"Flex is a very powerful and versatile technology for creating web application front-ends. But what every good web application needs is a robust data source, be it XML, or a database. Flex is very adaptable in terms of connecting to data sources, and that is the main focus of this book. In Foundation Flex for Developers, Sas and Koen assume that you've got the basics of Flex down already, and explores in detail how to create professional data-centric Flex 2 and Flex 3 applications. In the first half of the book, she starts off with a brief exploration of Flex and ActionScript 3.0, before looking at application essentials in detail ��creating custom components, user and web browser interactions, binding, formatting, and validating data, debugging, and more. In the second half of the book, the focus is on connecting Flex to data sources, and covers XML, LiveCycle Data Services, PHP, ASP.NET, and ColdFusion in detail, via a series of step-by-step case studies.

* Covers Flex application basics
* Covers connecting Flex 2 and Flex 3 to a variety of Data Sources
* Includes several complete case studies.

What youll learn

* How to create custom components
* How to handle user and web browser interactions
* How to debug Flex 2 applications
* How to bind, format, and validate data
* How to load and write external content
* The essentials of XML, and working with it in Flex 2, including E4X
* The essentials of Flex Data Services
* How to build up data-driven Flex 2 applications with PHP, ASP.NET, and ColdFusion backends

Who is this book for?
This book is for any Flex developer who knows the basics of building Flex UIs, and wants to learn how to connect their applications to data sources."

Foundation Flex for Developers: Data-Driven Applications with PHP, ASP.NET, ColdFusion, and LCDS Review

This is not a good book to learn from unless you learn best by thinking very deeply about what the teacher says and correcting errors.
I am up to Page 27 and have worked through the first example with FlexBuilder3. The book is riddled with problems, including typographical errors, imprecise explanations, and even a conceptual error.

Example page 21: click="txtResult.text= = String(cboUnit.selectedItem.data ..."
While reading this I wasted about two minutes trying to puzzle out why there would be two equals signs in a row before deciding that this is probably a typo. By working the example on my computer I confirmed this.

Example page 23: The book refers to both a NumberValidator and NumericValidator.
An engaged student will have to wonder, are there two different kinds of Validator, or is the teacher lazy? No one wants a lazy teacher but that appears to be the case here.

Example page 23: "The CDATA declaration prevents Flex Builder from parsing the contents of the..."
I believe this is an imprecision that can seriously throw someone off who is trying to learn this stuff. In fact the CDATA declaration prevents the *compiler* from parsing the contents of the... Flex Builder only gets involved because it happens to invoke the compiler, but the compiler is a separate agent here, and the critical one that should have been named.

Example page 26: "This event object will also be dispatched when the user clicks the Convert button because the validator uses the click TriggerEvent."
I don't mean to be an impertinent student, but I would suggest that this is just plain wrong and it reveals a conceptual misunderstanding on the author's part. In fact, in the code the author presents, the validator is invoked by an explicit call to a validate() method; the correct validation is done because the NumberValidator object has its source property set to the TextInput object. The TriggerEvent is not necessary, as I verified by commenting out this part of the author's code.

To be generous, this book is indeed teaching me Flex, but by a very peculiar pedagogical approach. Maybe indeed one learns better by being forced to think very hard about the validity of every single statement and sentence. What worries me is if this author launches off on the wrong track with regard to coding style and program architecture. Since I now know that I cannot trust this author, I'm not sure how much longer I'll stick with the book.

My recommendation: find a better book.

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