O’Reilly: Inside RIA

In the last tutorial, I examined some additional techniques for querying an existing database. Today I want to explain how you create a database and create a table inside of that database.. If you are good with SQL and have followed along with this series, this concept will work as expected.

 

In the previous tutorial, I demonstrated how to return all of the rows of a database table and access the results within AIR. Many times you will not want to retrieve all of the rows in a table, so today I will examine some techniques for querying your tables. I will focus on two main areas: Strongly Typing Results and Parameterized Queries.

 

In the previous article, I examined the process for running a simple SELECT query on a pre-populated SQLite database in AIR. In today's example, I will actually execute a simple SELECT query and use the results to populate a data grid. I will also look at how to include a pre-populated database with an AIR application.

In the previous article, I gave an introduction to SQLite and its place inside or AIR. In this tutorial, I will be explaining the code needed to connect to and query a previously existing SQLite database. This will take two articles to accomplish this, so this article will focus on learning the basic classes and methods that you will need to know. The next tutorial will contain a sample application that implements these features.

In the previous post, I examined the process for updating AIR applications in ActionScript. This was an extension to my original post about the Updater API inside of Adobe AIR. If you are not familiar with the update functionality inside of AIR, you will probably want to read the introduction.

 

 

In the last article, I examined the process for updating AIR applications. If you haven't read that article, you might want to go back and brush up on the basics. In today's article, I will specifically covering how to update an application in ActionScript (for Flex or Flash).

In this article I will also provide a sample application that illustrates the complete update process from beginning to end. I also have provided the source code for this example, so you can use portions of this in your own AIR application.

One of the most useful and exciting elements of the AIR API is the Update capability. This capability is further enhanced by the freedom AIR gives the developer in how to integrate this functionality. Update support within AIR is handled by the flash.desktop.Updater class (note that this is in the flash.desktop package and not flash.system from some of the earlier beta versions of AIR).

This screencast will demonstrate how to use the Clipboard Explorer AIR application. This application can be used to experiment with Adobe AIR's clipboard support. As with all of the samples I will post here - 'View Source' is enabled and can be used by simply right clicking on the chrome of the application and selecting 'View Source'.

In the last article, I introduced the key aspects of the clipboard support within Adobe AIR. There are a few additonal functions of the Clipboard in AIR of which you can take advantage. In this article we will example deferred rendering, transfer modes, and custom clipboard data types. These additional techniques can expand your knowledge of working with the clipboard in your AIR application as well as utilizing clipboard data between multiple applications.

Native clipboard support is an essential element of OS integration within AIR. Its use can be a simple as copying a line of text from one document to another or as complex as passing references to an array of files from one application to another. In this tutorial I will demonstrate the basics of the Clipboard functionality that is included with Adobe AIR.