Improving performance in your Flex Applications

Do you understand a day in the life of a Flex component (creation, initialization, invalidation/validation)? Have you heard of how Flex components have to run around this "elastic racetrack" (code execute/render) and how Flex components are structured to run optimally around this racetrack?

When extending a Flex component you need to know these things in order for your component to achieve the best performance possible.

Check out this Adobe Max presentation titled "Creating New Components in Flex 3" by Deepa Subramaniam (you wont be disappointed :P):
http://tv.adobe.com/#vi+f15384v1002

CakePHP 1.19 Test Suite testing with Session Component

Hello, you might be having a tough time doing some integration testing on your controllers which use the Session component. Here are is an example to help you get started:


class Foo_ControllerTest extends UnitTestCase
{
function test1()
{

$usersController = &new UsersController();
$usersController->_initComponents();
$usersController->constructClasses();
$this->assertNotNull($usersController->Session);
$usersController->Session->_checkValid();

}
}


This creates the model + components in your controller. The sessions should be working normally now.

Take at look at this to see how they did unit testing on the Session component itself for more ideas (https://trac.cakephp.org/browser/branches/1.2.x.x/cake/tests/cases/libs/session.test.php?rev=7246).

Adding a Resize button to a Flex Panel v2

check out this guys resizable panel: http://www.aboutflex.net/flex/resizable-panel/

Its pretty cool, but it won't work if you try to add the panel inside another component. Thats because handleScale directly references the stage to get the mouse coordinates. But if your component does not start at x=0 y=0 then the cordinates will be off.

here is the modified version which uses the parents mouseX,mouseY in handleScale:





heres the source:

ResizablePanelv2.mxml


<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<mx:Application xmlns:mx="http://www.adobe.com/2006/mxml" layout="absolute" xmlns:containers="com.flexas3.containers.*">
<mx:VBox horizontalAlign="center" verticalAlign="middle" backgroundColor="#696969" horizontalCenter="0" verticalCenter="0" width="50%" height="75%">
<mx:Button label="I'm in a Vbox" />
<containers:ResizablePanel title="Resize Me !!" x="73" y="110" width="258" height="213" />
</mx:VBox>
</mx:Application>



./com/flexas3/containers/ResizablePanel.as

package com.flexas3.containers
{
import flash.events.MouseEvent;

import mx.containers.Panel;
import mx.controls.Button;

public class ResizablePanel extends Panel
{
public function ResizablePanel()
{
super();
resizer.addEventListener(MouseEvent.MOUSE_DOWN,handleDown)
}
private var resizer:Button=new Button();

override protected function createChildren():void{
this.resizer.width=12;
this.resizer.height=12;

super.createChildren();
this.rawChildren.addChild(resizer);
}
override protected function updateDisplayList(unscaledWidth:Number, unscaledHeight:Number):void{
super.updateDisplayList(unscaledWidth,unscaledHeight);
this.resizer.y = unscaledHeight - resizer.height ;
this.resizer.x = unscaledWidth - resizer.width ;

}
private function handleDown(e:MouseEvent):void{
stage.addEventListener(MouseEvent.MOUSE_MOVE,handleScale)
stage.addEventListener(MouseEvent.MOUSE_UP,stopResize)
}
private function handleScale(e:MouseEvent):void{
if(parent.mouseX-this.x>50)
width=parent.mouseX-this.x;
if(parent.mouseY-this.y>50)
height=parent.mouseY-this.y;
}
private function stopResize(e:MouseEvent):void{
stage.removeEventListener(MouseEvent.MOUSE_MOVE,handleScale)
stage.removeEventListener(MouseEvent.MOUSE_UP,stopResize)
}
}

}