I’m running into pain points again with tasks. I’m using a blog to describe what I’ve done, ProjectPier app to list tasks, and a wiki to keep track of tools (which duplicates links from the blog.) This is the tool I want to build (and integrate with a build with integration tests)
I have the same issue at work where I’m trying to use outlook Journal for tasks. I should really just switch to notepad (EditPlus!) for that, but it doesn’t have rich text, links, and excel cut and paste. But I don’t think journal has search. Certainly not anything for easy navigation, not even a calendar view of the journal (to my knowledge)
And of course issues / bugs / tickets / requirements / change requests all fits in there too. It’s document-centric, but there needs to be good navigation, association, and search of the documents by tags, categories, date, project, etc.
Another unit testing framework for Action Script I saw mentioned in comments was ASUnit
I’ll look into that later.
I typed “flex unit test” into google, and came up with a couple results. This tutorial got me started with FlexUnit even though it covers FlexBuilder 2. Basically, you add the flexunit.swc file to your library (like a jar?) and you’re good to go. You cut and paste a testrunner.mxml GUI to call your test suites, which are somehow found automatically (by virtue of being in the same directory?)
var ts:TestSuite = new TestSuite();
ts.addTest( TemperatureConverterTest.suite() );
There are a few of warnings:
return value for function ‘onCreationComplete’ has no type declaration — on ExampleTestRunner.mxml
and:
duplicate variable definition — on TemperatureConverterTest.as
but no real problems.
The syntax is enough like Junit to not warrant any comment, though again, I’m sure I’ll notice details once I delve in. An interesting project would be to port (or look for) a TestNG [link] style framework with dependencies, but that’s overkill at this point.
I’ll look for a couple more tutorials. I remember seeing one before reading this that talked about a new way to run tests. Already, I want to be able to run tests without the GUI runner. Another project would be an eclipse plugin that can run FlexUnit similar to Junit tests.
I installed flexbuilder (60 day trial) –pretty impressive — and went through a couple tutorials [link] [link].
Flex.org also seems useful.
HTTPService seems to be the core for webapps, though I’m guessing there are similar elements for streaming, direct db connections, etc.
Binding and Datasources are still a bit of a mystery, and apart from learning ActionScript syntax differences from Javascript (return types are colon delimited after a method name?) and MXML elements (GUI elements are a snap with the IDE) , it’s seems fairly straightforward. A lot easier (and simpler) than I thought it would be, but just as Nate predicted.
I’m sure I’ll have other questions like packaging, string manipulation, and performance rules as I learn, but I feel I’ve wet my feet. I checked out like 4 (5) e-books on Safari and will thumb through them when I get time.
ActionScript: The Definitive Guide
Advanced ActionScript 3 with Design Patterns
Getting Started with Flex 3
Learning ActionScript
Object Oriented Programming with ActionScript
The first I’m going through is “Getting Started…” which is really more an introductory essay.
I downloaded the FlexBuilder 3 plugin [linl] for Eclipse 3.3 (installed in Eclipse 3.3.2)
Ran into a little trouble finding Eclipse 3.3.2 because I did it on the day Ecliipse 3.4 (Ganymede) came out. Luckily I had a spare copy that wasn’t customized. I spent some frustrating time trying to download the full bundle [link], but it would fail before completing. Blame Firefox for not having a real download manager, and my internet connection. Anyway, I did get the plugin, since it was only 300MB vs 400MB (is the flexbuilder plugin really 3 times the size of Eclipse?) and it’s working fine, no trouble with the installation.
I ran a couple of quick tutorials, including the FlickrRIA example [link] that is linked to from the download page. No problem.
Last night I set up a “QA Site” for the fluffy project. It took about 2 hours total to set up:
- fluffy.qa-site.com VirtualHost
- SVN
- Trac
- Bugzilla
- Wordpress
- PunBB
- ProjectPier
- index page
Trac still needs locked down and SVN still needs access control.
Next, I need file repository, mailing list, java, build tool, and test management tool.
I would like to integrate tasks, documents, requirements, tests, knowledgebase, wiki, forums, comments, q&a, faqs, meeting notes, issues, build, automated tests (unit, smoke, regression), etc. And centralize users.
But fluffy isn’t the QA Site project, it’s the Flex project.