Flash Core

Overview

Flash Core is a growing collection of ActionScript classes I use in every project.

The classes have been built and added to over the years, all in commercial projects, as generic solutions to specific problems.

They can be used as-is in much of your code, but are all thoughtfully designed to be built upon in whatever application you're building.

Some examples of classes in Flash Core are:

• Containers, such as HBox, VBox, Stack, Slider, Viewport
• Display classes, such as Preloader, ProgressBar, Waveform, Square, Circle
• Media classes, such as Video, Audio, Image, LocalImage
• Net classes, such as RestClient, PHPVariables
• Data classes, such as Cookie, Validator, Settings, ObjectModel, XMLModel
• Event classes, such as MediaEvent, ActionEvent, ValueEvent
• Managers, such as ScrollManager, BaseBootstrap, TaskQueue
• Tools, such as Draggable, Identifier, PixelMonitor, Marquee
• Utilities, such as Colors, Elements, Layout, Strings, Styles

To see the live projects this library developed out of, check out my Flash work at:

• davestewart.co.uk/flash/

Usage

Flash Core is designed to sit within your src folder, in a locally-namespaced setup.

Typical project setup is as follows:

+- project
	+- assets
	+- bin
	+- lib               // fully-qualified libraries
	+- src               
	    +- app           // application-specific code
	    +- core          // this library
	    +- dev           // development test code
	    +- Main.as

This results in 3 top-level namespaces for your project, siloing your development and intentions:

• app
• core
• dev

A typical class in a project using Flash Core might be set out like so:

package dev.media 
{
	import flash.display.DisplayObjectContainer;
	import flash.events.MouseEvent;
	import flash.utils.setTimeout;
	
	import core.display.containers.boxes.HBox;
	import core.display.containers.boxes.VBox;
	import core.display.Document;
	
	import app.media.VideoPlayer;
	
	import dev.components.ui.Button;
	
	public class AppPlayerTest extends Document 
	{
		...

As you can see the introduction of top-level (non TLD-based) namespaces makes it much easier to grok a class' dependencies and role.

Installation

You can install Flash Core either as a Git sub-module, or just download and unzip the files.

Note that the library's files must reside in a folder called core for the namespacing to work.

To install using Git sub-modules

1. Decide where you want to install the library (for example src/core)
2. Open a console window in the Git root of the project (otherwise the following command will fail)
3. Run the following code git submodule add https://github.com/davestewart/flash-core.git src/core (you'll need to change src/ if your path is different)

To install manually

1. Click "Download ZIP" in the top right of this page
2. Unzip to a project source folder (for example src/core)

IDE setup

Ensure one of your IDE's class paths point to the folder containing the core folder.

If you follow the project setup suggestion above, this will be src, but could just as well be lib.

Examples

For examples of Flash Core in action, see the Flash Core Demo repository.