By mikeypotter on

Yesterday the Adobe Flex team launched a Drupal powered application that showcases applications built with Adobe Flex. The new Flex Showcase is online now at http://flex.org/showcase_app.

The backend of the application uses Drupal, along with the Services, AMFPHP, Vote up / down and CCK modules. The front end of the application is written in Adobe Flex, with custom components written in Flash.

Drupal was chosen for the application because we needed a PHP framework that supported user registration and management, content management, categorization and tagging, and comments. Drupal was the best choice for these services, and with the work that Scott Nelson had already done with the Services and AMFPHP modules, the choice was easy.

This was a big decision for us. The Flex showcase is the most popular page on the Flex.org site, which had over 100,000 visits in August alone. (Its even more popular than the front page.)

The new application replaces a static HTML page that had screenshots and a one line description of applications. Developers can now add and manage their own applications, and include more screenshots and a longer description.

We created a number of new services for this application and fixed some bugs in the existing services module. All that code has been provided back to the Services/ module. We have contributed all our fixes back to the community, and have only kept one module that is specific to the Flex.org website as non open source. We haven't decided on whether we will open source the Flex application yet. We're thinking about it.

If you have any questions about the application, please let me know. The Services handbook page has some links on how to get started with Drupal and Flex, and Flex.org has a number of great resources for Flex. http://flex.org/php/ is your best bet if you're a PHP developer.

Thanks!

Mike

Mike Potter
Adobe Systems Inc.
Flex Developer Marketing Manager
http://flex.org/

⋅ Categories: Drupal 5.x

Comments

JohnForsythe’s picture

JohnForsythe commented

It's great to see someone as huge to the web design industry as Adobe using Drupal.

The site itself looks very Adobe-ish, great work making Drupal your own. It's also nice to see the Drupal logo up front, and I love that you're giving back to the community by contributing code. Well done.

--
John Forsythe
Need reliable Drupal hosting?

anawillem’s picture

anawillem commented

i see that flex is made by adobe and comes for a cost, so i assume it isn't under a gpl license, but i thought i'd ask anyhow. i am not as much of a purist as some (just a die-hard hope-against-hoper), but am also interested to know if there are any budding projects for a similar editor in the open source world. i'm hoping the answer is yes, and would search myself but am not familiar enough with the technology to even know what i would search under...

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anawillem
http://jellobrain.com

xmacinfo’s picture

xmacinfo
he/him
Primary language French
Location Canada
commented

This already answered. Look at the comment title "The Flex Framework, compiler" below.

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http://www.xmacinfo.com

toma’s picture

toma commented

wow, congratulation drupal, i am intersting on flex technology and happy to see drupal work with flex

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Biladi
http://www.biladi.ma

Walt Esquivel’s picture

Walt Esquivel commented

Great job! I enjoyed taking a look at the various web sites you showcased.

We ... fixed some bugs in the existing services module. All that code has been provided back to the Services/ module. We have contributed all our fixes back to the community...

And THANK YOU SO MUCH for fixing some bugs and providing code & fixes back to the community. Your help is greatly appreciated!

Walt Esquivel, MBA; MA; President, Wellness Corps; Captain, USMC (Veteran)
$50 Hosting Discount Helps Projects Needing Financing

Tom-182’s picture

Tom-182 commented

Wow, the site really amaze me...
Great job Adobe!

http://www.cellphonevibes.com

silverado’s picture

silverado commented

Amazing! A really great job.

Can it be done with Flash (the backend with Drupal and frontend with Flash)?

Any tutorials or videocasts?

Thanks

newms’s picture

newms commented

It can be done with flash. For tutorials and screencasts see the Services handbook. Also see this thread.

xmacinfo’s picture

xmacinfo
he/him
Primary language French
Location Canada
commented

Hi Mike,

This is an impressive job you did with Flex and Drupal. I'm looking forward to see more Flex running on top of Drupal.

Question: Where is Flex in the Open Source community? Can we expect to see some or all parts of Flex moved to open source?

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http://www.xmacinfo.com

mikeypotter’s picture

mikeypotter commented

The Flex Framework, compiler and debugger have been released under the MPL open source license (for Flex 3).

The virtual machine that is required to execute ActionScript 3 code, which Flex creates, has been released under the MPL license to the Mozilla Foundation as the Tamarin project.

So, pretty much everything related to Flex, except of course the Flash Player, has already been released as open source.

Mike

saidi’s picture

saidi commented

Great work! i hope that to see such initiative with Openlazlo.

rolodmonkey’s picture

rolodmonkey commented

I am actually working on an OpenLaszlo/Drupal framework. I started it months ago with this post:

http://forum.openlaszlo.org/showthread.php?t=8919

Since then, I have actually put up a site that uses a Drupal back-end for some of the parts. Take a look at the OpenLaszlo/Flash page:

http://www.rhlco.com/

and then look at the Drupal back-end:

http://www.rhlco.com/home

After learning a lot more about Drupal, I think the best route to take would be to write a template engine that outputs XML. Let me know what you think.

--

Read more at iRolo.net

hass’s picture

hass commented

...why is this not based on ColdFusion 8?

mikeypotter’s picture

mikeypotter commented

First off, I'm a PHP developer, and I happen to run flex.org as part of the Flex product marketing team, so that was one reason why I chose Drupal.

"Drupal was chosen for the application because we needed a PHP framework that supported user registration and management, content management, categorization and tagging, and comments. Drupal was the best choice for these services, and with the work that Scott Nelson had already done with the Services and AMFPHP modules, the choice was easy."

As far as I know, there's no CF framework that has all those features built into it.

This new site says nothing about ColdFusion. Adobe uses ColdFusion on the adobe.com website - its a great product and is perfect for creating web applications, especially those for large enterprises.

For this particular project, we thought that Drupal was a better fit.

Mike

that1guy’s picture

that1guy commented

Wow, I love the way registration and signup is handled with this site. Where can I get info on that specifically?

Nigeria’s picture

Nigeria commented

Great site!

You might want to change the sign up message, sent to the email address that one uses to register, to mention Flex Showcase instead of Drupal.

"Thank you for registering at Drupal. You may now log in using the following username and password:"

Ade Atobatele

Ade Atobatele

snelson’s picture

snelson commented

I'm really impressed with the way this came out. A great showcase for Flex apps, and an equally great showcase itself for what the Services module is intended to do. Excellent work!

--
Scott Nelson
This by Them, LLC
Drupal Services Module

Gman’s picture

Gman commented

This builds so many idea in my head. Seems that Drupal is robust enough to act as a backend for anything along these veins. I have plenty of research to get up to speed regarding Flex. Don't know where the time will come from, but I see the need to expand from just creating Drupal sites, to creating Drupal powered sites.

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Drupal Blog
Dog Parks via Drupal

Evance’s picture

Evance commented

yep!it gives more repute!

__________________________________

http://www.evance.name
http://www.qqschool.net

zeropaper’s picture

zeropaper
Primary language French
commented

And the stats at the Drupalcon were saying that Drupal needs more Flash...
They are 3 types of lies, the lies, the damned lies and the statistics ;)

By the way, the is really nicely done! Congratulations! we need such website for Drupal schowcases!

deanypop’s picture

deanypop commented

I guess this is a compliment - I can't see any standard drupalisms on this site at all... Which is good, because Drupal sites tend to be cookie-cutterish, generally. Still, it'd take a few more of these with a few more divergent UIs to really make the underbelly of Drupal shine... Otherwise you're left with people who still don't "get" that it isn't just yet another frontend blog application in php.

sepeck’s picture

sepeck commented

There are thousands of 'these' sites. Drupal, unlike various other CMSs has no requirement that anyone mention in the theme, css, footer, etc that it is using Drupal. As a result, there are thousands of sites using Drupal that you would never see. All it takes is a little bit of planning and effort on the part of the theme implementor.

-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide -|- Black Mountain

-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide

mikeypotter’s picture

mikeypotter commented

It is there...

If you want to see it, you can check it out at http://flex.org/showcase_app/drupal/

Mike

tatar111’s picture

tatar111 commented

Really great work, excellent.

Think. Filozofia i Religia. Or Filozofia i Religia.

jkopel’s picture

jkopel commented

Any chance that you will be talking about this project at MAX?
I would love to get the inside scoop.

mikeypotter’s picture

mikeypotter commented

Sure, I'd love to! Find me next week at the Flex booth or at the meet the Flex team event and we can chat about it.

I may also do a session during the Flex boot camp on Wednesday morning about it.

Mike

mikeypotter’s picture

mikeypotter commented

For those of you in Europe, I'll be at MAX Europe in Barcelona, so we can chat about it there too.
http://www.adobemax2007.com/

Mike

goose2000’s picture

goose2000 commented

Oh man, my two favorite worlds collide, but my exclamation key is busted - WTH. Drupalers should be happy and proud; Developers and end user types - EXCLAMATION POINT.

stupid usb keyboard.

travischristopher’s picture

travischristopher commented

+1 on opensourcing at least a bit of your flex app.

mikeypotter’s picture

mikeypotter commented

Thanks, we'll keep that in mind. I think a lot of people would like to see it, and I think it might make for an interesting app if we did that. I need to talk to the vendor about it.

Mike

kand’s picture

kand commented

It's realy greate!

mediashock’s picture

mediashock commented

Somone should come out with a source to something similar.. ive only had trouble connecting to services via flash so i gave up :(
JK

fallenleaf’s picture

fallenleaf commented

The original page url has been changed.
I think http://flex.org/showcase_page is the right one.
Library of brands

xmacinfo’s picture

xmacinfo
he/him
Primary language French
Location Canada
commented

The showcase URL is:

http://flex.org/showcase

This is not a Drupal site, though. Looks they migrated away.

/*_*/
http://www.xmacinfo.com

aac’s picture

aac commented

It is really a great concept to use Drupal as backend.

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aac