Flex and .NET Interoperability Session Slides & Code From MAX 2006

Finally getting around to posting my notes from my session on communicating with .NET web application from Flex that I gave at Adobe’s MAX in Las Vegas this year. I enjoyed giving this session as I truly believe Flex and .NET work well together and there are many methods for communication between both technologies, but currently there aren’t’ many resources covering it. In this session I talk mainly about 3 methods. Using HTTPServer/xml, WebServices, and AMF, as well as briefly touch upon Binary Sockets. I’m hoping in the future to have more detailed cover on each method.

You can download the slides and source code from here

Speaking at MAX on Flex and .NET Interoperability

Next week MAX will be held in Vegas and will be under the Adobe name for the first time. I’ll be there and will be speaking as well on Flex and .NET Interoperability. I’m looking forward to be giving this session as I believe there is a lot to be said about Flex and .NET, and there doesn’t seem to be enough resources on the topic. Actually I’m always amazed at how little the .NET development community knows about Flex/Flash. On my team, we have had great success with .NET as our back-end system and Flex as our rich client technology, and am a strong believer that they are very complimentary platforms.

In the session I plan to cover

  • Different communication mechanisms (AMF/Flash Remoting, XML, Sockets)
  • Debugging
  • Tips from experience

If you missed this session when you initially setup your schedule that is because there was a change only a few weeks ago on the session topic, but it should be available now in the MAX scheduling system. If you are attending MAX, make sure to say hello. I always enjoy meeting fellow developers. If you aren’t attending MAX, I don’t think it is too late to show up :)

Try/Catch and Try/Finally macros for VB.NET

I recently started playing around with macros in Visual Studio .NET 2003 and wrote up two I find very helpful: Wrap Try/Catch and Wrap Try/Finally. Basically, they take the selected text and wrap it in a try/catch block or a try/finally block.

This version supports empty selections (to create a new block) and both full-line and partial selections. It places the insertion point inside the try block for an empty selection and inside the catch block for a text selection.

Enjoy!

Imports EnvDTE
Imports System.Diagnostics

Public Module CodeModifiers

  Sub WrapTryCatch()
    WrapTrySomething("Catch ex As Exception")
  End Sub

  Sub WrapTryFinally()
    WrapTrySomething("Finally")
  End Sub

  Private Sub WrapTrySomething(ByVal middleText As String)

    If DTE.ActiveDocument Is Nothing Then
      Return
    End If

    Dim selection As TextSelection
    Dim startPoint As EditPoint
    Dim endPoint As EditPoint
    Dim insertPoint As EditPoint
    Dim empty As Boolean

    selection = DTE.ActiveDocument.Selection()
    startPoint = selection.TopPoint.CreateEditPoint()
    endPoint = selection.BottomPoint.CreateEditPoint()

    empty = startPoint.EqualTo(endPoint)

    DTE.UndoContext.Open("Wrap Try")
    Try

      Dim insertEndingCrLf As Boolean
      If endPoint.AtEndOfLine Then
        insertEndingCrLf = endPoint.AtStartOfLine
      Else
        insertEndingCrLf = True
      End If

      If Not endPoint.AtStartOfLine OrElse _
        endPoint.EqualTo(startPoint) Then
        endPoint.Insert(ControlChars.CrLf)
      End If

      endPoint.Insert(middleText + ControlChars.CrLf)

      If Not empty Then
        insertPoint = endPoint.CreateEditPoint()
      End If

      endPoint.Insert(ControlChars.CrLf + "End Try")

      If insertEndingCrLf Then
        endPoint.Insert(ControlChars.CrLf)
      End If

      ' insert try
      If Not AtStartOfLineIgnoringWhitepsace(startPoint) Then
        startPoint.Insert(ControlChars.CrLf)
      End If
      startPoint.Insert("Try" + _
                ControlChars.CrLf)

      If empty Then
        insertPoint = startPoint.CreateEditPoint()
      End If

      selection.MoveToPoint(insertPoint)
      selection.Indent()

    Finally
      DTE.UndoContext.Close()
    End Try
  End Sub

  Private Function AtStartOfLineIgnoringWhitepsace( _
                    ByVal point As EditPoint) As Boolean

    If point.AtStartOfLine Then
      Return True
    End If

    Dim p As EditPoint = point.CreateEditPoint()

    Do
      p.CharLeft()
      If Not Char.IsWhiteSpace(p.GetText(1), 0) Then
        Return False
      End If

      If p.AtStartOfLine Then
        Return True
      End If
    Loop

  End Function

End Module

This macro will only work for VB.NET. It can be translated to work with C# code or you can use the wonderful resharper plugin which unfortunately isn’t available for VB.NET.