The Essential Guide to Flex and Rails

The Essential Guide to Flex and Rails takes you through a set of practical scenarios that present the combination of these two technologies in the best possible light. Each chapter shows how easy it is to connect Flex to web server applications, particularly ones written in Rails. Flex provides a wealth of Rich Internet Application tools to augment the Ajax work Rails developers are already doing. And Rails is the ideal backend for Flex applications. Throughout the book, you will create such applications as a dynamic 3D viewer, a YouTube-style video player, 3D charts pulling data from Rails, and interfaces for quickly searching, sorting and grouping data. Shows how to combine the toolset of Flex with a Rails backend Simple projects get you started creating real world applications straight away Use Flex to build widgets that work together with Rails to go where traditional DHTML cannot What you'll learn Inspirational examples that provide new ways of working with web applications. New insights into how to use Flex to talk to web server applications. Novel patterns for accessing data in Rails applications. Handy tools for developing Rails applications quickly. Strategic insight into the pros and cons of Flex versus Ajax. Methods of integrating security into your applications. Who is this book for? This book is ideally suited to both Flex and Rails developers. If you are a Flex developer it offers enough Rails code and content to provide a solid backend for your applications. If you are a Rails developer it presents even more opportunities to extend your Web 2.0 functionality.