Can RIA flash apps on the IPhone store persist data until an internet connection is available?

Question

Hi,

I'm interested in building a thick client application for my existing web services that will run on the IPhone. Flash finally seems to be an option, so I thought about using Flex for client side development.

However, since flash apps are not natively supported by the IPhone, but only through a wrapper, I was wondering if these apps can persist any data. Data entered by the user should eventually be transmitted to the web service, but until then I want it to persist even if the Iphone should run out of power.

Is this possible? Or does the Iphone flash wrapper make it impossible to access the hard disk?

Answer 1

You can write to a database with SQLite3 as a way to store data on the phone.

"You have access to nearly all the AIR 2.0 and Flash Player 10.1 APIs. For example, you can use APIs such as RTMP, Remote Shared Objects, and AMF as well as AIR APIs like SQLite and filesystem access. For more information see the developer FAQ on Adobe Labs."

-source http://www.adobe.com/devnet/logged%5Fin/abansod%5Fiphone.html#

Also they seem to recommend not using Flex:

"While it is possible to create iPhone content using the desktop Flex Framework, we do not recommend it. The Flex framework is currently optimized for execution in a desktop environment. The performance, UI, and interaction models have not been optimized for mobile devices."

• source http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Applications%5Ffor%5FiPhone#Can%5FI%5Fuse%5Fthe%5FFlex%5FFramework%5Fto%5Fcreate%5Fcontent%5Ffor%5Fthe%5FiPhone.3F

Hope that helps :)

Answer 2

In case someone else is also looking for a way to use Flex on Iphones: Adobe is planning to release a mobile version of the Flex framework 2010.