Advanced ActionScript 3 with Design Patterns
Feb.22, 2011 in
ActionScript
Advanced ActionScript 3 with Design Patterns
Today’s ActionScript-based applications require increasingly sophisticated architectures and code. This book aids intermediate and advanced ActionScript developers in learning how to plan and build applications more effectively. You’ll learn how to apply design patterns as solutions to common programming scenarios. Beyond a reference, Advanced ActionScript with Design Patterns is a practical guide complete with sample mini-applications illustrating each design pattern.
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February 22nd, 2011 at 7:43 am
The real deal,
The design patterns movement, the beginnings of which can be traced to Gamma, Helm, Johnson and Vlissides famous Design Patterns book, has informed and changed software development, and spawned a raft of books and study groups.
That’s right, people actually get together, read these books one chapter at a time, and talk about software design patterns – for fun! (I admit to being one of them). So, Joey Lott and Danny Patterson are taking on a real challenge in writing a book on this topic, and the term “advanced” in the title is well-advised.
The first chapter is not about patterns but pretty basic object oriented stuff: inheritance vs. composition, polymorphism, code conventions, design first then write unit tests first. These topics are standard fare for a book of this type, and the chapter is blessedly succinct.
The second chapter is on programming to interfaces, a fundamental idea of great importance. Lott and Patterson give one of the clearest explanations I have read of the advantages, and give a convincing argument for always programming to interfaces even when you are using inheritance. Dude! Actionscript3 has interfaces!
Then you get the chapters on patterns: Model/View/Controller, Singleton, Factory/Template, Proxy, Iterator, Composite, Decorator, Command, Memento, and State. I guarantee that after you have read these chapters and studied the code, you will understand these patterns a lot better than before, and will have ideas on how to use them.
The book is rounded out with entire chapters on Events (everything you always wanted to know but were afraid you wouldn’t understand why), sending and loading data, E4X, and RegEx.
I have only a couple of minor cavils about the book. It would have been SO EASY to include the compilation command line.
/flex_sdk_2/bin/mxmlc MyProgram.as
See? Now you can compile for free! The book doesn’t give you info on command line tools, but assumes you have downloaded and installed the 30-day flex compiler. And in the wonderfully worked out and fully crafted source code which you can download from the publisher’s website, once again I was left scratching my head, when it said you have to set the source path to the library. Thanks very much, but tell me how?
It is not possible to have a useful book of this type without showing substantial amount of source for real projects, and fortunately, here Lott and Patterson really deliver. The projects are not on the level of usefulness of Phillip Kerman’s book on Flash 8 at work, but they are complete enough to illustrate the patterns. All source is in 100 percent Actionscript 3, with no Flex component source; since the book is not about Flex I consider this to be an advantage. At any rate, this book communicates the usefulness, as well as the nuts and bolts, of some fundamental software design patterns, several of which I have already used, and others which I will use soon.
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|February 22nd, 2011 at 8:26 am
Recommended, but…,
This is a book that I would classify as a “should have” for any Flash/Flex developer that uses ActionScript 3 and for whom OOD/OOP is important. If you could care less about incorporating OOD/OOP into your web applications, then you can pass on this one.
There is, in my opinion, a major shortcoming in this book. In presenting the MVC (Model, View, Controller), the “View” classes are presented as classes that extend the Sprite class, in which the author draws the objects via ActionScript. Unfortunately, the author seems to ignore the fact that most developers, who employ Flex to build their web apps, will use MXML to layout the view. In such cases, there are no examples of how the author would design the view and controller classes so as to follow a proper MVC design pattern. The same would be true for Flash developers as most are not going to draw the entire screen of their web apps via ActionScript. As a consequence, I feel that most people who read this book will not successfully implement these design patterns into their Flex web apps unless they have prior OOD/OOP experience. In either case (with or without OOD/OOP experience), only the most determined web developers will be able to translate the design patterns of this book in a meaningful way within their applications. This above-mentioned shortcoming is carried throughout the book.
While I realize the title of the book is “Advanced ActionScript 3…”, and the argument can be made that the content was only meant to address pure ActionScript 3 concepts, it still ignores the fact that most developers will not develop their web applications with “only” ActionScript 3 and absent any MXML document to define their screen layout. As such, this becomes all but useless in promoting the increase use of the design patterns being presented.
Ron
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|February 22nd, 2011 at 9:07 am
excellent concise info on AS3,
I realize the book title (and the focus and organization) is about design patterns, but I thought it was worth adding the fact that–for me at least–it’s the one book I keep coming back to for great lucent coverage of really key AS3 concepts including event dispatching (and using IEventDispatcher instead). I mean, Colin’s Essential AS3 is one to turn to for definitive answers on sub-atomic (and important) details… but I still keep coming back to Danny and Joey’s book because it’s so direct and to the point. To really learn a subject you need more than a book–but to go back over things… to get a good skeleton starter script (which doesn’t have extra baggage)… and for brief clear explanations, this book really does it. It’s by no means a dated book either. I just think some people might pass over this book because the title makes it sound like it just covers design patterns when, in fact, it’s just a great AS3 book.
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