How to work out a small Adobe AIR Application?

Question

Hi,

I would like to know how is it possible, or what knowledge do I need to acquire to create a small Adobe AIR application, probably like a employee directory search that will search and show a list of employee names, from a application based on php/mysql?

Thanks.

Answer 1

First thing you need to do is the communication with php/mysql application based on JSON or XML (whoever suites you). You have to have a page like website.com/employee_list.php which returns you the XML or JSON that you call from ActionScript.

Then you need a fair knowledge of ActionScript (which isn't a very hard language if you programmed before in C or C-based languages), but don't be scared, the help covers it all.

After that you will require an IDE of choice between Flash or Flex (the second is easier to the beginners due to its large object and display library which helps you create rather fast a good looking application.

The search for employees gives you 2 options to realize it:

• search made via php/mysql and you just output the results
• search made via ActionScript searching on the array of results obtained in 1st step by requesting to the php/mysql app the complete list of emplyees

The final step is just to write the code and export the project as an AIR application.

Hope that helps! :)

Answer 2

As an addition to Bogdan's answer, you can also program in Javascript in Adobe Air. Everything (well almost) you can do using the Flex components has a Javascript wrapper, so it is possible to write an Adobe Air app without using any Flex at all, and only using HTML/Javascript.