360Flex - Cairngorm for Adobe AIR Applications

January 29th, 2008

My session at 360Flex Atlanta is titled, Cairngorm for Adobe AIR Applications. Here is the gist of the session:

Cairngorm is not built for AIR applications, but rather for Flex applications. To take advantage of the AIR API specifics, you will have to modify the way that you work with Cairngorm. I will be going through some “best practices” for working with Cairngorm in your AIR applications, and I will be making a small announcement that hopefully can assist you in your future AIR development.

If you have any special items that you would like me to cover in this class, feel free to leave a comment. I will do my best to work your issue into the discussion (or at least cover it here on the blog).

7 comments on “360Flex - Cairngorm for Adobe AIR Applications”

01

David,

I’ve been working with a client that is using Cairngorm in its AIR application. So far we haven’t really run into any incompatibilities that I can think of. Could you perhaps elaborate a little more on what you mean by “Cairngorm is not built for AIR applications”?

Thanks,
Andy

Andy Goldstein at January 29th, 2008 around 12:23 pm
02

@Andy - It’s not the Cairngorm doesn’t work for AIR apps, it is just that you can’t (by default) take advantage of the AIR API - specifically areas where an AIR application’s lifecycle would be different from a Flex application. Cairngorm doesn’t (by default) enable you to work with BrowserInvokeEvents / InvokeEvents (command line arguments) in the Cairngorm workflow. Cairngorm also doesn’t have any way to differentiate an online and an offline application. These are just a few of the items.

I myself have build several AIR applications with Cairngorm - “incompatible” might not have been the best word to use. However, the truth is - Cairngorm was not built for AIR.

David Tucker at January 29th, 2008 around 12:28 pm
03

I also fail to see how Cairngorm and its use can vary between Flex and AIR applications.

Cairngorm is nothing more than an MVC framwork with some specific helper classes and guidelines to handle asynchronous events. Saying “Cairngorm is not build for AIR” is similar to saying “MVC is not built for AIR”.

Perhaps you’ve run into issues trying to use AIR-specific API in an event-driven manner? We had interesting architecture discussions, for instance, about how to intelligently use offline detection (instead of just throwing error messages when a fault was returned by each service). But there have been good, architecturally-sound and consistent solutions for everything in AIR we’ve worked with. I’d be curious for an example of what’s led to your conclusion.

Nick Matelli at January 29th, 2008 around 12:36 pm
04

David, I assume that you’ve looked at Eric Feminella’s AIR Cairngorm:
http://www.ericfeminella.com/blog/air-cairngorm/

I’ve used Eric’s code to deal with SQLite database communication with good results, but I was hoping that the Adobe Consulting crew would come out and comment about AIR-oriented extensions.

What are you planning on showing at 360Flex?

Leif

Leif Wells at January 29th, 2008 around 12:38 pm
05

@Leif - I have seen Eric’s AIR-Cairngorm - and I have spoken with him directly about my session, and I will be using some of his classes as a part of the discussion. I will be demonstrating using these classes as well as some classes that I have developed to assist in coupling AIR API-specific features to a Cairngorm application.

David Tucker at January 29th, 2008 around 12:42 pm
06

Hi David hope we get to see a video tutorial of air cairngorm in the near future.

Kofi at January 29th, 2008 around 7:00 pm
07

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daveteiye at May 6th, 2008 around 10:06 pm