robotlegs/robotlegs-framework/blob/master/src/org/robotlegs/core/IContextProvider.as#L16

Don’t do that you naughty sausage! Your codebase will evolve (if all goes well), and line 16 will be replaced by a newer, shinier string of characters. Or, in this case, it’ll point to something that no longer exists.

This, on the other hand, is more likely to stick around to haunt its author (me):

robotlegs/robotlegs-framework/blob/v1.1.2/src/org/robotlegs/core/IContextProvider.as#L16

Select a tag before you link to your fancy code (“Switch Tags” under GitHub‘s “Source” menu).

Stupid names, useless comments, multiple levels of abstraction, poor error handling, super deep nesting, etc etc etc. It pretty much breaks every rule in the book. But the best bit has to be this:

Yes, that’s right, a five dimensional array!

Automatic Mediation

In order to determine the scope of a view component, Robotlegs listens to the contextView for bubbling capture-phase ADDED_TO_STAGE events:

MediatorMap.as#L233
MediatorMap.as#L260

Every display object that lands on the stage inside the contextView is checked against a mapping dictionary. This can be quite expensive for complex display object hierarchies where there is a lot of re-parenting. It’s also the only option available if you want to keep your view components completely framework-unaware. If, however, you’re prepared to modify your components slightly (it’s a one-liner) then you can try out this utility:

http://github.com/eidiot/robotlegs-utilities-LazyMediator

Instead of listening for ADDED_TO_STAGE events emitted by every component, we listen only for custom events dispatched by view components that explicitly require mediation.

Note: This utility currently only supports the MediatorMap and needs to be expanded to support the ViewMap. Fork and improve!

Default Injection Points

The actors in the MVCS package have a number of pre-configured injection points (dependencies). When you extend mvcs.Command all you are really doing is inheriting some dependencies:

mvcs/Command.as#L23

Whilst handy, it is quite seldom that we actually use all of those in a given Command.

A much cleaner, and ever-so-slightly cheaper approach is to declare only the dependencies that you actually need. Instead of extending Actor or Command (this doesn’t work so well for the Mediator class), just create a vanilla class and declare your dependencies manually:

public class MyCommand
{
	[Inject]
	public var injector:IInjector;

	public function execute():void
	{
		injector.mapClass( Vehicle, Car );
	}
}

Remember, the Robotlegs apparatus is already mapped for you if you need anything:

mvcs/Context.as#L190

Notice that the IEventMap is not mapped as a value or singleton – you’ll get a new IEventMap instance whenever you ask for one.

That’s it for now!

A huge big “Thank You” to everyone involved. Let the “utility building” begin!

Robotlegs is an automated dependency injection framework for Flash, Flex and AIR.

If you want to try it out, you can download this zip-ball:

git-prompt.zip

Unpack that into your User folder, and add this to your bash .profile:

# Git Prompt - Modified from: http://volnitsky.com/project/git-prompt/
[[ $- == *i* ]] && . ~/git-prompt/git-prompt.sh

Tip: You can open your .profile from your terminal like so:

open ~/.profile

Note: You will need to start a new shell session after editing that file in order to see the changes.

I use Nano as my default bash text editor. If you want that, add this to your .profile:

# Use the nano text editor
export EDITOR="nano"

And for the Terminal.app style:

Power-User-Pro.terminal.zip

The shell commands (copy-paste):

mkdir Test
cd Test/
git init
touch somefile
git add somefile
git commit -m "commit message"
echo "hi" > somefile
git add somefile
git commit -m "second commit"
git checkout -b temp
echo "hello" > somefile
git add .
git commit -m "3rd commit"

The (better, but not awesome) code is over at:

http://github.com/darscan/SillyStockPriceExample/tree/robotlegs

I’m still trying to figure about the best way to illustrate the simplicity and flexibility of the Robotlegs framework. In the meantime however, I thought I’d respond to this cool Swiz video by doing the same thing with Robotlegs – except ending up with a modular (as opposed to a static) app, and throwing in some git/GitHub love as a bonus.

I don’t have a nice mic, so I strapped a phone to the side of my head and left myself a really long voicemail. Anyhoo:

You can grab the (terrible) source over at:

http://github.com/darscan/SillyStockPriceExample

RobotLegs is nearly at v1.0! Many awesome changes since v0.8, with the most community involvement to date:

http://github.com/robotlegs/robotlegs-framework/commits/v0.9.2

The “Official RobotLegs Framework Repository” has also been moved:

http://github.com/robotlegs/robotlegs-framework

A LOT of exciting stuff is going on, and I encourage you to check out the Wiki:

http://wiki.github.com/robotlegs/robotlegs-framework

An upgrade guide from v0.8 isn’t really necessary is it? Here’s a list of some of the changes introduced in this last sprint:

• SwiftSuspenders DI solution fully integrated (bundled) into RobotLegs
• Constructor Injection (via SwiftSuspenders)
• Bonus DI Adapters removed
• CommandMap now features strong Event mapping
• As3commons logger removed
• Utils inlined and removed: createDelegate() and DelayedFunctionQueue
• dispatch() helper method renamed to dispatchEvent()

And various miscellaneous optimisations, cleanups and API changes.

RobotLegs AS3 is a Dependency Injection Driven MVCS Framework for Flash, Flex and AIR.

Help make RobotLegs the cleanest, smallest, most testable, and most kick-ass framework for Flash and Flex ever built – join the discussion group:

http://groups.google.com/group/robotlegs/topics

Or help fill up the Robotlegs Knowledgebase:

http://knowledge.robotlegs.org/