Some say that if a technology has a lot of frameworks, then it is a sign of maturity. You might argue with that, but still I think it is interesting to know what are the available frameworks in the Flex/Flash world.
This is work in progress, thus if you know other frameworks, please post a comment or send me an email.
MVC frameworks and Dependency Injection
- Cairngorm (Adobe Open Source) – MVC framework
- PureMVC (Open Source) – MVC framework
- Mate (Open Source) – Mate is a tag-based, event-driven Flex framework
- Swiz (Open Source) – Metadata-based Dependency Injection framework
- Spring ActionScript (Open Source) – Dependency Injection framework part of SpringSource
- Parsley (Open Source) – IOC Container (Configuration and Dependency Injection), MVC, and localization
- Robotlegs – automated metadata based dependency injection micro-architecture (framework) with a light footprint and limited scope
- HydraMVC – total rewrite of the PureMVC API exclusively for Flex
- dpHibernate – lazy loading across BlazeDS and Hibernate
- Flight Framework – MVC framework
Articles to get some idea about what these frameworks offer:
Testing frameworks and code coverage
- FlexUnit (Adobe Open Source) – conceptually based on famous JUnit
- FlexPMD (Adobe Technical Services) – tool for auditing AS3/Flex code against bad practices (anti-patterns, unused code, over-complex code, inefficient code). You can add rules and it can be used from Ant/Maven or Automator (Mac).
- Funit (Open Source) – Metadata Driven Unit Testing for Flex
- asUnit (Open Source) – Unit Testing Framework
- fluint (Open Source) – Unit Testing with further richer asynchronous support and support for integration-level testing
- FlexMonkey (Open Source) – UI testing, capture replay
- Selenium (Open Source) – API for Selenium
- FlashSelenium (Open Source) – Selenium RC Client driver extension
- HP QuickTest Professional 9.5 (Commercial License)
- mock-as3 (Open Source) – mock object library
- FlexCover (Open Source) – code coverage
- FunFX – functional testing framework
- Mock4AS – a simple Mock Object Library for ActionScript3
- ASMock – ActionScript 3 Mocking Framework
- Mockito – mocking framework for Flex
Building and Continue Integration
- Ant task (Adobe Open Source) – comes with Flex SDK
- flexmojos (Open Source) – Set of maven plugins for Adobe AIR and Flex development
- ServeBox (Open Source) – Flex maven plugin
- Flex Maven Reports (Open Source) – Maven reports for Flex
- Hudson (Open Source) – Continuous Integration engine
- CruiseControl.NET (Open Source) – Continuous Integration engine
- projectsprouts (Open Source) – cross-platform project generation and configuration tool for ActionScript 2, ActionScript 3, Adobe AIR and Flex projects
Flash 3D Engines
- AlternativaPlatform
- Papervision3D
- Away3D
- Sandy3d (OpenSource)
- Ambiera Coppercube – create your scene or import your 3D models into the CopperCube 3D editor, set camera controllers, materials and more, and click ‘publish’.
Server side libraries/frameworks for Flex
PHP:
- Zend AMF – remoting library, part of the Zend Framework
- AMFPHP – remoting library
- WebORB for PHP – remoting and data messaging (producer/consumer)
- SabreAMF – remoting library
Java:
- LiveCycle Data Services ES (Adobe, commercial license) – remoting, data messaging, data management, proxy, real time data pushing and synchronization, paging
- BlazeDS (Adobe Open Source) – remoting, data messaging, proxy
- Graniteds (Open Source) – remoting, EJB 3 services, data push
- WebORB for Java – remoting, data management, real time data messaging, client synchronization and paging. Additionally, it supports streaming video, recording video and remote shared objects
- Pimento (Open Source) – data management
ColdFusion:
- LiveCycle Data Services ES (Adobe, commercial license) – remoting, data messaging, data management, proxy, data pushing and synchronization, paging
- BlazeDS (Adobe Open Source) – remoting, data messaging, proxy
.NET:
- WebORB for .NET – data management, real-time messaging, remoting, MSMQ integration, client synchronization for data management, video streaming, remote shared objects
- FluorineFX – remoting, data messaging, data management (partial)
- Visual Studio plugins for Flex (you can use these plugins to develop Flex applications in the Microsoft Visual Studio; both are free):
Ruby on Rails:
- WebORB for Ruby on Rails – remoting
- RubyAMF (Open Source) – remoting
Python:
- PYAMF – remoting
- DjangoAMF – remoting
- AmFast – AMF0/AMF3 encoder/decoder for Python. Core encoder and decoder are written in C, so it’s around 18x faster than PyAmf
Utils:
- as3corelib – library that contains a number of classes and utilities for working with ActionScript 3 (include classes for MD5 and SHA 1 hashing, Image encoders, and JSON serialization as well as general String, Number and Date APIs)
- as3xls – package to read and write Excel files (it supports reading text, numbers, formulas, and dates from Excel version 2.x-2003 and writing text, numbers, and dates)
Uncategorized
- RIAlity – an advanced arquitecture for Flex and JEE with tooling (Eclipse Plugins) that allows to be more productive and deliver better RIA products
- Gaia Framework – open-source front-end Flash Framework for AS3 and AS2
- Degrafa (Open Source) – declarative graphics framework for Flex
- TLFX (MLP 1.1 license) - built on top of Text Layout Framework, it is a library for rendering HTML/CSS in Flash applications
- UML4AS – UML Editor for ActionScript and Flex. Support code generating, reverse engineering, round trips.