MadComponents with RobotLegs: FlickrGallery

1. Introduction
2. Modifying the architecture of existing Flex Robotlegs-based FlickrGallery
3. Implementing UI interfaces with MadComponents
1. Pros and cons of "static" and "extension" techniques to extending MadComponents
2. Typed model and UIList's custom renderer
3. You cannot access children views in Mediator.onRegister()
4. Instead of conclusions
1. Compile and try
2. I was lazy
3. Thoughts
4. Summing up

Introduction

During last days I was playing with amazing AS3 library "MadComponents" - lightweight open-source UI framework for Flash. This library is maintained by Daniel Freeman and he claims that "MadComponents" targets mobile apps via Adobe AIR. And I could say that the library proves that point: it's fast and provides ready-to-use components, which fit to mobile UI, out of the box. One of the great features is a declarative UI markup: just feed framework with correct XML and it produces components' tree that automatically layouts depending on device screen dimensions.

protected const LAYOUT: XML =
 <horizontal alignH="right">
  <input id="searchTermInput" width="150" />
  <button id="submitSearchButton">search</button>
 </horizontal>;

I've created prototype for my commercial project very quickly utilizing MadComponents. Since prototype phase had satisfied my needs I've decided to introduce the library with my favourite ActionScript MVC framework RobotLegs.