Getting started with Flex Builder, BlazeDS and Eclipse

Question

Hi,
I'm a java developer looking at RIA for the first time. I'm really excited about BlazeDS and object remoting, but I can't get a working dev environment together. I'm assuming I should use Flex Builder for the client code, Eclipse Europa for the java webapp code, and deploy from both IDEs into the BlazeDS-equipped turnkey-Tomcat. I haven't found a tutorial explaining how to deploy a new webapp with this setup.
The turnkey-Tomcat sample app works fine. Trouble starts when I try to create  a new project in Flex Builder. I don't understand the 'debug' deployment that Flex Builder does. Why are there 2 versions of my app, the regular and the debug versions? What is exactly the project structure that I'm supposed to have in Tomcat?
The specific error I encounter when trying to deploy a new Flex project is this:
[MessagingError message='Destination 'productService' either does not exist or the destination has no channels defined (and the application does not define any default channels.)']
I do have a default channel configured for my environment in services-config:
And I do have a valid destination configured in remoting-config (I'm mostly interested in object remoting):
            test.ProductService
Here's the client code:
What am I doing wrong? Where can I get help on these specific topics? Also, does anyone have an Ant build file that would automate this sort of deployment?
Thanks!

Answer 1

Hi Peter,<br />I don't have problems passing JavaBeans to Flex. For collections, I used DataGrid, it displayed my collection seamlessly, except I don't get column headers, just a column index number. For receiving a single JavaBean, I had a little more trouble, until I tried to display it with a DataGrid: it displayed a single row that represented my data, with each java property name used as a column header, and object attributes were displayed as 'object'. These 2 experiences led me to these conclusions:<br />- for the collection, Flex converted each element into an ordered list of attributes<br />- for the single bean, Flex converted it into a hierarchy of Maps of attributes<br /><br />I didn't create a Flex value object. Flex is doing it automatically,very much like in JavaScript/JSON: dynamic objects.<br /><br />Here's the remote object markup:<br /><br /><!-- We target the remote Java object through BlazeDS gateway: --><br />     <mx:RemoteObject id="myRemoteObject" destination="productService" <br />                          fault="Alert.show(event.fault.faultString, 'Error');"><br />          <mx:method name="getProductsCount" result="setProductsCount(event)"><br />               <mx:arguments><br />                    <arg1>{productSC}</arg1><br />               </mx:arguments><br />          </mx:method><br />          <mx:method name="getProducts"><br />          <!-- search params are wrapped in a model, ProductSC (will be converted to a Map on <br />                the server side by BlazeDS): --><br />               <mx:arguments><br />                    <arg1>{productSC}</arg1><br />                    <!-- This works because we declared these to be Bindable: --><br />                    <arg2>{pager.pageSize}</arg2><br />                    <arg3>{pager.currentPage}</arg3><br />               </mx:arguments><br />          </mx:method><br />          <mx:method name="getProduct" result="goToView()"><br />          <!--<mx:method name="getProduct">--><br />               <mx:arguments><br />                    <arg1>{selectedRecordId}</arg1><br />               </mx:arguments><br />          </mx:method><br />     </mx:RemoteObject><br /><br />And here's the dataGrid that displays the bean collection:<br /><br /><mx:DataGrid id="myDataGrid" <br />                               dataProvider="{myRemoteObject.getProducts.lastResult}" <br />                               change="selectRecord();"<br />                               width="100%" height="100%" ><br />               </mx:DataGrid><br /><br />Let me know how it goes, I'd be glad to assist if I can.<br />Miguel