Flex: Flare ForceDirected demo updated for AIR
I have gone back and updated my force directed graph demo to work with Flex 4 and Flare. I am quite pleased with the result. It runs on the AIR runtime.
You can download the executable here.
You can download the source code here.
I am pleased to say that the last version of Flare seem to have fixed all of the issues from when I last looked at this in 2008 (over three years ago..can you believe it).
The demo displays a sample graphML description taken from my Social Graph Browser
It’s not perfect but there are some interesting features of the code to note:
- Custom edge renderer to display the ‘association’ attribute of the graph.
- Custom nodes with images which represent the ‘association’ attribute of the graph.
- Nodes with a custom button which highlights when the mouse is moved over it and when clicked displays the target web page on the ‘browser’ tab. Also the buttons display a tooltip with a message
It shouldn’t be too hard to convert this back into a Flex web application as the code is totally self contained. My original plan was to use Flare to implement the graph in my Social Graph Browser application but the original version of the library had too many problems to do that so I let it drop at the time.
My current plan is to convert what Flare demos I have into AIR applications as I go along.
I hope this proves useful.
Flex: Sparql Browser AIR version
I have created an AIR runtime version of my SPARQL browser.
You can download the executable here.
You will need to install the AIR runtime to use it. The reason for doing this now was that I realised that the sort of people who would use this are not experts in setting up a web-server etc.
There is one feature which is a bit of pain and that is setting up the queries file. In theory it would be loadable in a sort of “file..open” kind of way. I have not had time to implement or think this through so for the moment you will have to edit the config file which is bundled in the install. There is a howto on the google code site here.
I have had a look around at the other kind of graphical tools for SPARQL which came in the wake of this one and I still haven’t found anything that is as general as this.
Note
The online version is currently broken. This is a direct side-effect of me moving this website and all it’s files to a new provider. I do plan to fix this, just not right away. The application uses a proxy-script to issue requests and I am not sure how to set this up on my new webspace quite yet.
Flex: IFrame 1.3.4
I am very pleased to announce that there is a new version of the Flex IFrame. This is the work of Julien Nicoulaud . Julien works on the open-source project OW2 JASMINe which uses the IFrame as part of a sub-project Kerneos.
As well as bringing his own additions to the code he has brought together the many fixes posted on the issues sections of the Google code page. Also, (as if that wasn’t enough) he has re-factored the codebase and added comments and documentation plus added some amazing new examples. There is also a new Google group where users can discuss the component here.
I had a look over the code on Friday and was really impressed at how much it was improved. I have been lax at keeping the code up to date and Julien has made an completely fantastic job of it.
Many many thanks to Julien for taking this on.
Flex: IFrame zoom in/out fix
Ariel Sommeria has made a nice fix for a buggette in the Flex IFrame.
Currently if you zoom in and out of the page the Frame resizes as well. Ariel has made a clever fix which forces the frame back to the size it was when rendered the first time (I hope I have understood this correctly).
There is a sample with source here. Nice to see a demo to show off the addition.
Flex: IFrame has a new home
I have moved the IFrame to be hosted on Google Code.
There are a few reason for this.
- It will provide a permanent home for the code (currently if I change my ISP it would be lost)
- I will set up a proper Google group to field questions on it’s usage.
- A proper bug tracking mechanism
The current version is one submitted from Ryan Bell who is developer at Fusion Media Interactive. Ryan is the latest in a line of people who have taken the time to try and improve the component. Many thanks to him and to all the others who have submitted changes/fixes.
As noted on the new site in future if you want to submit a change to the IFrame then it will have to come with a Flex demo which shows off the particular feature you have added. It’s a bummer I know but really I don’t have time to put these sort of things together so no demo no update. Flex is a doddle to write in and it will take you ten minutes of your time!
All references to code on this site will gradually be moved to the Google Code site. So in future this is where you can find it.
Flex: SPARQL Browser Update
More changes to the SPARQLbrowser.
Right click to view/download the source code.
- Datagrid columns are rebuilt on each query. Each column represents one of the query bindings.
- Cancel query button. This is only active when the query is running.
There are bugs:
- Datagrid columns sort isn’t sorting on the column contents. It’s a long story but basically because I am building the grid columns from scratch I seem to have run into a problem with missing behaviour which the mxml version does not exhibit.
- Sometimes (but annoyingly not always) the graph just sits there twitching away and does not expand to fill the available space. The reason for this is something to do with the canvas area it has to draw on shrinking. The solution is to change the size of the browser window. The problem will immediately go away. No doubt there is a Noddy fix for this.
Update #1
The world most esoteric Flex application just got better! I have fixed the issue with the datagrid wordwrap and cell height. Just to recap – if the wordwrap was switched on then long text in a grid cell would push the datagrid off the page!!! Do you know how I fixed this? I heard a colleague at work tallking about setting the minHeight property to zero. I was busy at the time but I knew he was trying to fix a datagrid formatting issue so I thought to myself tonight ‘ho hum..lets see what happens if I set minHeight to zero’. Well it works. No idea why. I will have a chat to the developer tomorrow.The other grid sorting bug remains. Still I remain hopeful. There is always a way (sometimes).
Update #2
Some cosmetic changes. I have moved the ‘cancel query’ button over to the left and taken out the ‘execute’ label.
Flex: SPARQL Browser Update
I have been making some changes to the SPARQL browser.
Right click to view/download the source code. This is Flexbuilder 3 project only. Note I have made a slight modification to the BirdEye library so you can’t just use the latest swc file from their site you will have to use the one bundled with the project.
- Uses the latest version of the Birdeye graphing component(as of 19/08/08).
- Displays tuples in result grid
- Directed edges
- Edge labels for binding names
- New node renderer uses colour codes to indicate type. Blue is primary result URI, red is a literal and green a URI which you can click on and view in the Browse tab.
Also, I have fixed an issue where queries were failing if you chose a different endpoint. This should work with most SPARQL endpoints now.
Flex: WMS with Google Map Flash Control
Javier De La Torre has some really impressive examples of using a GeoServer WMS feed to generate overlays for Flash Google Maps. The custom WMS provider used in the WMS demos from this site is based originally on code very generously posted by Javier onto the UMap forum.
WMS overlay for Google Map for Flash here.
Heat maps over Google Map for Flash here.
I have had a play around with the Flash Google Map API although I haven’t looked at it recently. It is certainly something I would use though. The UMap component is free to download but requires a license to use so the addition of WMS support for the Google map solution is a fantastic addition.
Flex: Update – UMap WMS Provider UMap Traffic demo
I have now updated the original WMS provider Traffic demo for AFComponents UMap Flex map control.
This uses the latest version as of today 2nd August 2008, version 1.1.
Right click to view/download the source code.
Flex: Update – UMap WMS Custom Provider demo
I have updated the original WMS provider demo for AFComponents UMap Flex map control.
This uses the latest version as of today 2nd August 2008, version 1.1.
There are a few changes to the demo.
- The WMSTileProvider uses DefaultProvider as the base class. You no longer need to supply dummy copyright, language and settings files. The only function which need overriding is the one which returns a copyright string.
- The InfoWindow style “InfoWindowStyle.AUTO_SIZE_SIDE” is not accessible in the previous way. I ended up not setting this and everything seems to work.
Right click to view/download the source code.