Lesson 5. Handling Events and Data Structures

What You Will Learn

In this lesson, you will:

• Create an <mx:Model> tag that creates a simple client-side data model

• Create a complex client-side data model using an ActionScript class

• Use Flex framework system events

• Implement Flex framework user events

• Examine the event object that is created each time an event is dispatched

Approximate Time

This lesson takes approximately 1 hour and 15 minutes to complete.

Lesson Files

Media Files:

Lesson05/start/assets/inventory.xml

Starting Files:

Lesson05/start/Dashboard.mxml

Lesson05/start/DataEntry.mxml

Lesson05/start/EComm.mxml

Completed Files:

Lesson05/complete/Dashboard.mxml

Lesson05/complete/DataEntry.mxml

Lesson05/complete/EComm.mxml

Lesson05/complete/valueObjects/Product.as

Lesson05/complete/valueObjects/ShoppingCart.as

Lesson05/complete/valueObjects/ShoppingCartItem.as

An important part of building a rich Internet application (RIA) is building effective client-side architecture. When you use Flash Player to build an application, you have the ability to use an event-based programming model, build rich client-side data models, and create a logical application following good object-oriented best practices. This type of development is very different for web application developers as it does not use a page-based development model. Ultimately, using this client-side, event-based architecture will result in better-performing applications that consume less network traffic because page refreshes are no longer needed. During this lesson, you will receive an introduction to the powerful object-oriented language and event-based programming model of ActionScript 3.0.

The finished FlexGrocer data structure built in ActionScript 3.0 and integrated into the application.