RobotLegs Hello World Video Tutorial

Wednesday, November 18th, 2009 | ActionScript 3, tutorials, videos

Hey everyone. Long time, no see. I’ve just been super busy leading a team of flash guys on a big project which has left very little time for experiments and playing with code. Anyway, hopefully I’ll get back into my routine and get a few posts out a week again.

This post comes courtesy of Joel Hooks offering a free t-shirt to anyone who made a RobotLegs Screencast. I’m a sucker for geek apparel, so here’s what I made:

Watch the RobotLegs Hello World Video Tutorial

Click to view the video in a pop-up. Right-click and “save as” to download the video to your hard drive.

For more info on RobotLegs, check out www.robotlegs.org and join the google group.

Also, the IDE I’m using in this demo is FDT. If this demo doesn’t convince you to check out FDT, I don’t know what will

Owen Corso

for anyone curious about FDT's quickkeys for that awesome auto completion we're seeing, i found a complete list here:
http://fdt.powerflasher.com/blog/?tag=tutorial
command + 1 was the one i was searching for. you just instantiate a variable as if it were already declared and hit command + 1 and poof! it brings up a declaration dialog box.

fdt 3.5 also has a similar mechanism for auto generating event constants. its so sweet.

i've been a Flex Builder 3 user for a while but am now making the switch so i can do all code editing (html, java, css, as3, js, php) in one place.

best registry cleaner

Nice example.
Im glad to see someone else coding on a black background.

J.

At 6:27, you write "in" and FDT propose you [Inject]. I haven't the same with my FDT. Can you tell how do this please ?

am

hi John, thanks for this! Hope you got the t-shirt :P
I have a problem:
TypeError: Error #1009: Cannot access a property or method of a null object reference.
at simplerobotlegs.controller::RequestGreetingCommand/execute()
Maybe the injection it's not working? Do you have any clue?

thanks,
.am

Mark

Hi, i've got an error on SimpleViewMediator/onRegister(). It seems that "eventDispatcher" in eventMap.mapListener(eventDispatcher, GreetingEvent.GREET, onGreet);
is null.
Can you share the source? Thank you very much.

Timmy

Nice example.
Im glad to see someone else coding on a black background.

Anton Mills

your a machine! I've tried FDT before but I guess I didn't give it a real chance and reverted to FlexBuilder, I've reinstalled FDT and will try to give it some love this time!

Great vid, I was struggling to get my head around RobotLegs but it really helped me to get a handle on the basics, really looking forward to the next installment!

Cheers,

jadd

hello john and thanks.
I'm impressed by FDT!!! and your coding speed! I saw you coding in Flex builder, but god this is awesome. Unfortunately FDT is very expensive!!
Cheers.

Joe

Hello,

I copy all your code step by step, for one hour. I compile and I have an runtime error. I can't resolve it. Can you share the sourcecode please ? Thanks :)

Andrew

John, your explaination is very good.

What theme do you use for eclipse?

Alec McEachran

That's where @darscan's videos on Robot Legs are. I've been collecting interesting and useful as3 videos into a channel (http://vimeo.com/channels/69084). Yours would be a welcome addition. I like knowing I can go back to one place for useful videos.

No big deal if you don't want to put it up, it's entirely your prerogative, of course. I just wondered if you would. Sorry I should have written at more length to start with, but it's late on Friday evening where I am and I'm tired!

Alec McEachran

No chance of seeing this on Vimeo is there?

John Lindquist

@Alec - Why Vimeo? I chose to provide it in a format that anyone can easily download and watch later...

JB

Watches video.
Feels like a bunny in front of 3000KW headlights.
I have absolutely no idea what I just watched.

John Lindquist

@Alan - Trust me, I use quick outline all the time when the method isn't already visible on the screen. Seems a little gratuitous in these tiny classes though.

Alan

Speed up your navigation by using the quick outline. I see you are jumping to classes and then moving down the cursor... no need to do that.

Jump to your class>hit command-O>start typing the method name> hit enter.

Also try adding Next/Previous History to key stokes. I use Command -(left arrow) / (right arrow)

enzuguri

@John Lindquist Ok fair enough, just checking out some the examples on the robotlegs site, 12.5kb is a nice small footprint. I was originally porting a site framework from PureMVC to parsley, but these has proven to be too large. I think these may be the solution I am looking for, kind of a "best of both worlds" experience.
Cheers, keep up the great work!

enzuguri

Excellent tutorial, I'm pleased to see someone who uses FDT to it's highest potential, although you are missing one great speed trick.

Under (FDT->Editor->Code Assist) replace "auto activating triggers" with ".qwertyuioplkjhgfdsazxcvbnm". Basically this means that instead of waiting for "." before bringing up the auto complete box, it does it on every keystroke, much like FlashDevelop.

So I'm wondering what the typical footprint of RobotLegs is? I know you have the SmartyPants IoC in there (or you did last time I checked), for example, what is the "build release" size of the swf in this example?

John Lindquist

@enzuguri - I can't stand having code complete on every keystroke, especially on larger projects.

Jörg Lehmann

hey john, thanks for this neat tutorial on robotlegs, seems to be a pretty solid framework..

@paul, that's exactly what i thought, when i first saw a flasher code in fdt.. but it's really simple, just have a bunch of fdt shortcuts on hand, and your workflow speeds up tremendously!