Anyone else wish they could write AS3 on the server side?
May 22nd, 2007
Although we’ve been using FDS & Java for our SearchCoders/Dashboard application and we have Java expertise in-house (a.k.a. Robert Cadena), if we could just use AS3 for both client and server-side code, that’s what we’d do. I would assume that Adobe has thought about this. Will Apollo be the answer? Will we be able to have our Apollo app on the client talk to our Apollo app on the server? I don’t want to start a flame war about database support in Apollo, but I do want to hear if other developers share my desire to use AS3 for everything.
May 22nd, 2007 at 4:32 pm
Have you checked out the latest features of WebOrb?
May 22nd, 2007 at 5:10 pm
Hi Campbell,
How has your experience been with it? In general, I’m hesitant to use products that don’t have Adobe’s support behind them (Red5, AMFPHP, etc.). My reasoning is that if I end up commiting to a product like that, eventually Adobe will come out with something I’d rather use and then I’m stuck with dead-end code. It has happened to me in the past.
-Tom
May 22nd, 2007 at 5:49 pm
Yeah, sure! use AS3 as the default programming Language for Coldfusion!
May 22nd, 2007 at 11:47 pm
umm yes. what would be even better in my opinion, is the server side and client side to converge and let the ide or compiler deal with what to output. maybe a serverside swf?
i’ve got a lot of push from some developers because they say it should all be separate, mvc blah blah blah. bungie labs just came out with an all in one tool that you dont have to worry about programming for client side or server side. its gone. they give you an ide your web browser that you just write your website application with. they agreed that it was a pain in the butt having to maintain and write javascript, html, css on the client (multiply this frustration by all the browsers you have to support) and then write code on the server side in another language of your choice, php, java, asp, ruby, etc. and THEN talk to a database or XML file that uses another language SQL or XML and the list goes on.
There is only a client server relationship because thats what we’ve been *forced* to develop for. If we were writing a desktop application, creating a connection object and binding to it to the database in the same mxml or as3 file would not be an issue.
I’ve been developing for the web since it came out and I remember when server side languages came about. It made a split in development. Now you had to know two languages and pass information back and forth between them. It was horribly inefficient for coding and broke up the flow.
It all comes down to making it easier to develop. I want to press one button to compile my app. I want to have one file, bind to local objects, (who cares if they are on the server or the client). I want my development to be as uncomplicated as possible. I think Nicolas Cannasse’s HaXe is a language that you write to and it writes the server side code and client side code. You write to one language. The mxml compiler could split the information from your mxml or as3 file into client side swf and server side files or server side swf. my 2 cents
May 23rd, 2007 at 12:11 am
You should probably take a look at the Haxe Language (http://haxe.org) if you haven’t already - it compiles to Flash, JS and NekoML, which is run on the nekovm and can be used for server side applications.
May 23rd, 2007 at 2:13 am
Yes! I do every day!
A group of us were talking about this with some of the CF team at CFObjective this year, and we were tossing around this kind of idea:
http://www.firemoss.com/blog/index.cfm?mode=entry&entry=5CACF9D5-3048-55C9-4375077876923333
May 23rd, 2007 at 3:05 am
Yes, DEFINETLY! …preferably some (Adobe) solution that would eagerly be adopted by all shared hosting companies and would be available for both IIS and Apache, maybe even with an option to compile the server tier also as an (fast) CGI application to be used on shared hosts that wouldn’t support the (preferred) server runtime.
The Web enabled applications my company (would like to) develop all require server side logic but because these are off the shelf products and possible clients use either IIS or Apache, mostly on shared hosting sites we now have to always develop the server side tier twice and also have to target multiple databases.
It would be absolute fantastic if we somewhere in the future could develop flash client-server apps without the need to worry about the different (shared) serverside techologies a user might want to use the app on.
May 23rd, 2007 at 2:44 pm
I’d definitely like to see ECMAScript on the server-side. We technically wouldn’t have ActionScript since most of the core classes from flash.* wouldn’t be useful there. The difference between a server side ECMAScript and ActionScript 3 would be like the difference between JavaScript 2 (notice the 2) and ActionScript3. They’re the same core language based on the same standard, but each has different libraries for its specific needs.
May 23rd, 2007 at 6:28 pm
Yeah the WebOrb guys are kicking but and all features are going to be crossplatform (.net, php, ROR, and Java) so that server side can be changed out to another framework with no noticeable effects to client.
Then inside the client (flash/flex) its just like ruby on rails, using the database as model, but in client you can get a cat object by
var cat:Cat = Cat.find(conditions or id);
cat.collar_color = “red”;
cat.save();
And its all introspective with database, just like ActiveRecord in Ruby on Rails. And I hear they will be tightly integrating with IDE as well so development will be seemless.
I think your fears wont be a problem, use the tools you have that are best for the job now. and the reality of the matter is that if you write applications with proper layer separation you shouldnt have to change much later on if you do change the datalayer.
May 23rd, 2007 at 8:19 pm
I could be wrong …. but JScript.NET has implemented such ECMA standard in .NET environment on the server side.
May 25th, 2007 at 4:57 am
You are correct there Tangent, but of course you still have to write a front end for it.
July 14th, 2007 at 8:47 pm
Yes. ActionScript 3 on the server side is the next step. I would like to only have to use AS3 on the client side and AS3 and XML technologies like Xindice on the server side.
July 25th, 2007 at 10:06 am
[…] All said, nothing is stopping the community from developing an open source project based around this concept. A quick search of Google reveals that at least one other person is having similar thoughts. […]