Frameworks for Flex, flash, action script

Some say that if a technology has a lot of frameworks, then it is a sign of maturity. You might argue with that, but still I think it is interesting to know what are the available frameworks in the Flex, Air, Flash, Action Script world.

This is work in progress, thus if you know other frameworks, please post a comment or send me an email.

MVC frameworks and Dependency Injection

• Cairngorm (Adobe Open Source) – micro architecture, MVC, singleton, front controller, binding property, Icommand, Iresponder design pattern are included
• PureMVC (Open Source) – MVC, Command, controller, facade, mediator, model, notification, notifier, observer, proxy, view design pattern are included
• Mate (Open Source) – Mate is a tag-based, event-driven Flex framework
• Swiz (Open Source) – Metadata-based Dependency Injection framework
• Spring ActionScript (Open Source) – Dependency Injection framework part of SpringSource
• Parsley (Open Source) – IOC(Inversion of Control) Container (Configuration and Dependency Injection), MVC, and localization
• Robotlegs – automated metadata based dependency injection micro-architecture (framework) with a light footprint and limited scope
• HydraMVC – total rewrite of the PureMVC API exclusively for Flex
• dpHibernate – lazy loading across BlazeDS and Hibernate
• Flight Framework – MVC framework

Articles to get some idea about what these frameworks offer:

• FrameworkQuest 2008: Introduction
• Choosing a Flex framework

Testing frameworks and code coverage

• FlexUnit (Adobe Open Source) – conceptually based on famous JUnit
• FlexPMD (Adobe Technical Services) – tool for auditing AS3/Flex code against bad practices (anti-patterns, unused code, over-complex code, inefficient code). You can add rules and it can be used from Ant/Maven or Automator (Mac).
• Funit (Open Source) – Metadata Driven Unit Testing for Flex
• asUnit (Open Source) – Unit Testing Framework
• fluint (Open Source) – Unit Testing with further richer asynchronous support and support for integration-level testing
• FlexMonkey (Open Source) – UI testing, capture replay
• Selenium (Open Source) – API for Selenium
• FlashSelenium (Open Source) – Selenium RC Client driver extension
• HP QuickTest Professional 9.5 (Commercial License)
• mock-as3 (Open Source) – mock object library
• FlexCover (Open Source) – code coverage
• FunFX – functional testing framework
• Mock4AS – a simple Mock Object Library for ActionScript3
• ASMock – ActionScript 3 Mocking Framework
• Mockito – mocking framework for Flex

Building and Continue Integration

• Ant task (Adobe Open Source) – comes with Flex SDK
• flexmojos (Open Source) – Set of maven plugins for Adobe AIR and Flex development
• ServeBox (Open Source) – Flex maven plugin
• Flex Maven Reports (Open Source) – Maven reports for Flex
• Hudson (Open Source) – Continuous Integration engine
• CruiseControl.NET (Open Source) – Continuous Integration engine
• projectsprouts (Open Source) – cross-platform project generation and configuration tool for ActionScript 2, ActionScript 3, Adobe AIR and Flex projects

Flash 3D Engines

• AlternativaPlatform
• Papervision3D
• Away3D
• Sandy3d (OpenSource)
• Ambiera Coppercube – create your scene or import your 3D models into the CopperCube 3D editor, set camera controllers, materials and more, and click ‘publish’.

Server side libraries/frameworks for Flex

PHP:

• Zend AMF – remoting library, part of the Zend Framework
• AMFPHP – remoting library
• WebORB for PHP – remoting and data messaging (producer/consumer)
• SabreAMF – remoting library

Java:

• LiveCycle Data Services ES (Adobe, commercial license) – remoting, data messaging, data management, proxy, real time data pushing and synchronization, paging
• BlazeDS (Adobe Open Source) – remoting, data messaging, proxy
• Graniteds (Open Source) – remoting, EJB 3 services, data push
• WebORB for Java – remoting, data management, real time data messaging, client synchronization and paging. Additionally, it supports streaming video, recording video and remote shared objects
• Pimento (Open Source) – data management

ColdFusion:

• LiveCycle Data Services ES (Adobe, commercial license) – remoting, data messaging, data management, proxy, data pushing and synchronization, paging
• BlazeDS (Adobe Open Source) – remoting, data messaging, proxy

.NET:

• WebORB for .NET – data management, real-time messaging, remoting, MSMQ integration, client synchronization for data management, video streaming, remote shared objects
• FluorineFX – remoting, data messaging, data management (partial)
• Visual Studio plugins for Flex (you can use these plugins to develop Flex applications in the Microsoft Visual Studio; both are free):
  • Tofino from Ensemble
  • Amethyst from Sapphire Steel

Ruby on Rails:

• WebORB for Ruby on Rails – remoting
• RubyAMF (Open Source) – remoting

Python:

• PYAMF – remoting
• DjangoAMF – remoting
• AmFast – AMF0/AMF3 encoder/decoder for Python. Core encoder and decoder are written in C, so it’s around 18x faster than PyAmf

Others:

• Red5 – Media Server

Utils:

• as3corelib – library that contains a number of classes and utilities for working with ActionScript 3 (include classes for MD5 and SHA 1 hashing, Image encoders, and JSON serialization as well as general String, Number and Date APIs)
• as3xls – package to read and write Excel files (it supports reading text, numbers, formulas, and dates from Excel version 2.x-2003 and writing text, numbers, and dates)
• Flex-Extensions – provides behaviors, templates, and great utility classes

Uncategorized

• RIAlity – an advanced arquitecture for Flex and JEE with tooling (Eclipse Plugins) that allows to be more productive and deliver better RIA products
• Gaia Framework – open-source front-end Flash Framework for AS3 and AS2
• Degrafa (Open Source) – declarative graphics framework for Flex
• TLFX (MLP 1.1 license) –  built on top of Text Layout Framework, it is a library for rendering HTML/CSS in Flash applications
• UML4AS – UML Editor for ActionScript and Flex. Support code generating, reverse engineering, round trips.
• BabelFx – Localization IoC Framework for Flash/FLex