Part 2: Application flow and structure

Part 1 focused on putting together the core blocks of an application. Part 2 moves forward with the application’s wiring and structure.

Flex is an event-based environment. Although part 1 discussed the basic mechanics of using events, the next nine chapters go into much more depth about how the event model works and how you can make your own events. You’ll use the power of events to add navigation and interactivity to your Flex applications.

A Flex application isn’t much use without a backend system to exchange data with. You’ll learn about the mechanisms available to transfer data back and forth as part of application flow.

That data may come in the form of XML, which the Flash Player is adept at handling. With Flex’s support for ECMAScript for XML (E4X), you can use ActionScript to work with XML as if it were a native ActionScript data type.

Once you have both the building blocks and the flow of an application under your belt, the application structure will be the key to making your code manageable, maintainable, and reusable. Flash Player supports a number of ways to achieve this, so we’ll end this part of the book by discussing how to encapsulate logic into modular pieces.