I’m sure you know by now that the Flash Platform is a great choice for making great front end applications to databases, or web services.  However, did you know with the release of AIR2 you can now use Flash or Flex to make gui front ends for existing programs or processes on your machine?  That’s right, AIR2 brings us a new feature called NativeProcess which let’s you communicate with existing programs or processes running on your machine.

See Christian Cantrell’s blog for the rest of the AIR2 new feature list.

I really enjoy building small apps for myself that are either fun or help with workflow.  Recently I was on an HTML5 project that required me to upgrade all my browsers to the absolute latest versions.  Well when I upgraded Firefox to 3.6, I could no longer use my Flash Tracer add-on, which caused a big workflow issue with my current Flex project.  While I know there are plenty of debug alternatives to Flash Tracer, I thought this would be a perfect chance to take AIR2′s NativeProcess out for a spin.  It also gave me a simple demo app for my talk at 360Flex about AIR.

So here’s what the simple logger app looks like.

Now that you’ve been blown away by my design skills, let’s walk through what, how, and where to get this app.

WHAT

AIR2, cross platform ( mac, win ), flashlog.txt reader.

HOW

Cross Platform – to take advantage of NativeProcess, your application must be installed as a native installer.  After you build your application, when you export the release build you select native installer instead of .air file.  When building AIR apps that you want to export as a native installer, you must build your application on the correct platform.  That is, I can’t build the .exe of this application on OS X, only the .dmg installer.

FlashBuilder option for native installer is in export release dialog

Since this app is so small I had no problem storing the OS X and Windows specific code in the same place.  When the app is run I use flash.system.Capabilities.os to determine Windows or MAC.  I know the path to flashlog.txt is now hard coded into Flash Player, but I still have to build the platform appropriate path to flashlog.txt.

MAC - /Users/{username}/Library/Preferences/Macromedia/Flash Player/Logs/flashlog.txt

WIN - C:\Users\{username}\AppData\Roaming\Macromedia\Flash Player\Logs\flashlog.txt

To grab the current username I parsed the results of File.userDirectory.url.  The last piece to setup is the path to the executable used by NativeProcess.  On OS X I’m using tail, which lives at /usr/bin/tail.  For Windows7, Powershell should live at C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\powershell.exe.

TIP : On OS X, you can use the “which” command to locate a program ( EX : which tail ).  On Windows, use the “where” command to locate a program ( EX : where powershell.exe ).  You will want to know this if the paths in this app doesn’t work for you.

Read flashlog.txt – to read flashlog.txt on OS X I’m using NativeProcess + tail.  On windows I’m using NativeProcess + Powershell’s Get-Content cmdlet.  Now that we know platform and paths, it’s time to setup our NativeProcessStartupInfo which will contain the executable we’re going to use, plus any required arguments.  In order to setup your NativeProcessStartupInfo object, you will need to know how to use the nativeprocess via command line first.  Using OS X’s tail as the sample, you can read the contents of flashlog.txt by running this in Terminal.

tail -f /Users/{username}/Library/Preferences/Macromedia/Flash Player/Logs/flashlog.txt

I can run tail in Terminal, or in an AIR application using NativeProcess

Here is the equivalent AS3 setup for running the same command via NativeProcess.  The executable is set to a File which points at tail.  The arguments required by tail are stored in a Vector<String>.

var nativeProcessStartupInfo:NativeProcessStartupInfo = new NativeProcessStartupInfo();
nativeProcessStartupInfo.executable = new File("/usr/bin/tail");

var processArgs:Vector.<String> processArgs = new Vector.<String>();
processArgs.push("-f");
processArgs.push( "/Users/"+user+"/Library/Preferences/Macromedia/Flash Player/Logs/flashlog.txt" );

nativeProcessStartupInfo.arguments = processArgs;

Now that the startup info is set, it’s time to setup our NativeProcess listeners, then start the process.

var process:NativeProcess = new NativeProcess();

// add listeners
process.addEventListener(NativeProcessExitEvent.EXIT, onNativeProcessExit );
process.addEventListener(ProgressEvent.STANDARD_OUTPUT_DATA, onStandardOutput );
process.addEventListener(ProgressEvent.STANDARD_INPUT_PROGRESS, onStandardInput );
process.addEventListener(IOErrorEvent.STANDARD_ERROR_IO_ERROR, onIOError );
process.addEventListener(IOErrorEvent.IO_ERROR, onIOError );

process.start(nativeProcessStartupInfo);

And that’s all there is to it, the important bits of reading flashlog.txt using AIR2′s NativeProcess.  NativeProcess has me excited because it opens a whole new world of apps that can be built.

I wrote this app for personal use and my 360Flex talk.  If you have interest in seeing more AIR2 samples, have a look at http://www.delicious.com/ericfickes/360FlexDCLinks+air2.  I put together a bunch of links supporting my talk on HTML and AIR which should keep you busy for a while.

WHERE

Click me to download the full source AIR2BUGGER

OS X DMG INSTALLER

WINDOWS EXE INSTALLER

I spoke at the last 360|Flex in San Jose, but I’m already more excited for the DC conference, and here’s why.

1. I’m speaking about the most exciting part of the Flash Platform, AIR2
2. Jesse vs. Jesse ( Flash vs Flex throwdown )
3. It’s in Washington DC
4. My band The Compilers will be giving a lunch talk, as well as playing live at one of the parties
5. There is talk of Duanne Nickull’s band 22nd Century playing ( hopefully Sean ‘the flex guy’ too )
6. Doug McCune is giving the opening Keynote speech on Monday
7. I get to hang out with the Flex community

If you haven’t been to a 360 Flex conference yet I highly recommend it.  If you still need help deciding, here are a few conference questions for you.

1. Do you currently work with or have any interest in Adobe Flex?
2. Have you attended a 360 Flex conference yet?
3. Do you want to meet the community loudmouths you’re already following on Twitter?
4. Have you seen who is speaking at 360 Flex DC?
5. Have you ever heard The Compilers play live?
6. Are you still reading this blog post?

The last 360 Flex I spoke at was in San Jose and it rocked.  The city of San Jose bored me to tears, but I felt like I was living inside my twitter feed for three days.  My presentation was on the final day of 360 Flex, so I spent most of the conference preparing, and sitting in a few sessions here and there.  I spent almost half of my time in San Jose working and still met 10-15 of my twitter buddies, not to mention all the new contacts I met.  In a nutshell, if you attend a 360 Flex conference, you will meet the community.  In fact, you’d have to try pretty hard to not meet the Flex community.

If this sounds up your alley, go ahead and register to take advantage of the early adopter ticket price of $450.  I’m not sure when the ticket price will go up to $599, but I know it will so act fast.  If you make it to DC, be sure to find me and introduce yourself.  I promise it will be a good time.

Early adopter price $450	360|Flex Information ABOUT SCHEDULE SPEAKERS REGISTER

In case you missed the June RMAUG meeting, my band The Compilers played our first hybrid concert and presentation show. Who are The Compilers? As far as I know, we’re Denver CO’s only Tech Funk Fusion trio that use internet technology along with analog instruments. By day we’re internet programmers, and by night we’re rockers. Right now majority of our software revolves around the Flash Platform, so it was only natural that we play at RMAUG.

Below is a recap of our setlist, and notes about the technology we presented on. When you see mentions of a Flash movie, these are not run as standalone SWF files. They are actually played by our Flex based Compilers Live Player. This application runs on our guitarist Jun Heider’s laptop, and the entire app is controlled over MIDI, via a Behringer FCB1010 Foot Controller, MMJ, and MERAPI.

Intro Song

For the first song of our set we decided to use a funny and informative Flash movie to give the audience a hint at what they’re about to see. For the June RMAUG show, this movie was updated to include spoken thank you slides for the companies that make our technology, and special shout outs to all the people who help us put on a great show.

Watch Flash Intro Movie

I want an iPhone

Watch Flash iPhone Movie

Tweet Jam v2

James vs. Rick

The Flash Platform Rocks!

The Compilers Next Show

YO!

Here’s a cool AIR utility you can use to generate Adobe CS3 or Web2.0 style icons – AIR Icon Generator

Here’s a fun Adobe AIR powered fart machine – www.ifartair.com