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August 19, 2008

Cairngorm Plugin Sneak Peek

This is very much work in progress, but I thought it was about time I shared my work on the Cairngorm Plugin. At the very least this blog post is intended to give myself a kick to get it finished! I would like to release a Beta version in the next couple of months.

The intention of the first release is to focus on the Front Controller and simplify the addition of new CairngormEvents and their corresponding Commands.

In the mean time I would like to provide some detail on what I have done so far and describe some of my ideas. In the whole the plugin is complete, I have all the moving parts, I just need to bring them together.

Cairngorm Nature

So the basic idea is you will be able to add the Cairngorm Nature to your Flex/AIR project:

When you add the nature (and I haven't done this bit yet) you will be able to configure the preferences for you Cairngorm project and it will create the basic Cairngorm project structure. At some later stage I may add a Cairngorm project wizard that will just do it all on project creation.

Cairngorm Preferences

The pattern of maintaining Java or Flex SDKs under your workspace preferences should be a familiar one. The Cairngorm Preferences (which is complete) follows this pattern. It allows you to have multiple versions of Cairngorm configured under your preferences:

The intention is the Cairngorm distribution will not only provide the Cairngorm.swc, but include the codegen templates. This way we won't need to update the plugin every time Cairngorm changes and it will also give you relative freedom to change the templates if you don't like my code style :)

Project Properties

Every project will have its own Cairngorm Properties (which is complete). This will associate the project with the required Cairngorm installation so it can access the codegen templates. It will also allow you to configure the default packages for events and commands:

New Class Wizards

The Cairngorm Plugin will provide a few new Class wizards for codegen, this will include a Cairngorm Command, Cairngorm Event, Cairngorm Controller:

New Cairngorm Command

The New Cairngorm Command wizard (which requires some refactoring) will allow you to create a new Cairngorm Command and Cairngorm Event, which will be added to your selected Front Controller:

New Cairngorm Event

This is exactly the same as the Cairngorm Command wizard.

New Cairngorm Controller

The new Cairngorm Controller wizard (which requires some refactoring) will allow you to add a new Front Controller. Sorry no screen shot at the moment as it is currently broken.

Summary

I have a bunch of ideas floating around in my head and I would love to hear your ideas. My intention is to get the Beta version out and then form a team around the plugin on opensource.adobe.com to take it forward, at this point I hope to publish a roadmap. So now I have said there is going to be a Cairngorm Plugin I just need to get it finished!

Posted by pmartin at 3:04 PM | Comments (8)