Flex standalone application with no database

Question

I am trying to develop an application which can be used locally by my team mates. its a sort of issue tracking application with report generation. am planning to do it on flex. in my company environment, i do have a lots of restrictions like, can't install AIR, no database, etc.

so am planning to develop on flex app, and put it in a shared drive. now the main problem is how can i store data. i have an idea like using excel files as database. I want opinion about this option, as well as, if anyone has tried reading and writing excel files from Flex application I want the suggestions also.

Thanks, Anoop

Answer 1

Flex provides the RemoteObject, WebService, and HTTPService tags for accessing remote data and services. AIR Expands that a bit with some APIs for local file access (File) and SQL Lite database.

Without AIR APIs you won't be able to write local files; and I doubt you can write them. You could try to use HTTPService with a "file://" URL. I would expect cross domain issues.

Can you set up the Flex app to access a remote server? If so, you can have the server deal with creating and editing the excel files. but, if you could do that why not use a real database?

You can look at other tools to create desktop applications from Flex. I believe Janus is one option ( http://www.janus-flash.com/ ). You could also use Flash Pro and publish to an executable; but it would be difficult, but possible, to make that support Flex code. Zinc is another option ( http://www.multidmedia.com/ ).

If AIR isn't allowed, I'm not sure why these other options would be, though. I can't help but wonder if you're better off exploring an MS Access solution instead of trying to turn client/server technologies into desktop technologies.

Answer 2

You can read/write to local files using the FileReference class. I've used the FileReference class for opening and saving images without using serverside code.

Here is an example:

    package 
{
    import flash.display.Loader;
    import flash.display.Sprite;
    import flash.events.Event;
    import flash.net.FileFilter;
    import flash.net.FileReference;
    import flash.net.FileReferenceList;

    public class Main extends Sprite 
    {

        public function Main():void 
        {
            if (stage) init();
            else addEventListener(Event.ADDED_TO_STAGE, init);
        }

        private function init(e:Event = null):void 
        {
            removeEventListener(Event.ADDED_TO_STAGE, init);        

            //load a file when the application starts
            var fileRef:FileReference = new FileReference();
            var fileRefList:FileReferenceList;
            fileRefList = new FileReferenceList();
            fileRef.addEventListener(Event.SELECT, function(evt:Event):void {
                    fileRef.load();                     
            });


            fileRef.addEventListener(Event.COMPLETE, function(evt:Event):void
                {       
                    //do something with the loaded data here
                    trace(fileRef.data);        
                    onSave();
                });

            var arr:Array = [];

            arr.push(new FileFilter("Data file", "*.dat"));

            //prompt the user for the file to load 
            fileRef.browse(arr);
        }

        private function onSave():void
        {
            var fileRef:FileReference = new FileReference();
            fileRef.save("this is my data to save");
        }
    }

}