Question

I have an app that has been a standalone app ’til now; however, in another app it’s going to be a wee little module.

Is it possible to somehow maintain 1 codebase when the standalone has a source tag of:

<mx:Application>

and the module has a source tag of:

<myModuleBase>

Or is it better to keep a separate branch and just merge them together when the standalone has new changes that I want to propagate to the other?

The standalone app will eventually be taken down as part of phase 2 of this new project but that is several months off and features may be added in the interim.

Can I do this with a separate application file?

Thanks for any helpful tips!

Answer 1

This shouldn’t be too difficult to implement. (Disclaimer: I have not messed with modules in Flex)

You have two top-level files, appNameStandalone.mxml and appNameModular.mxml

Those only include the main mx:Application and MyModuleBase tags, and contain inside them an MXML component that represents the actual application.

//appNameStandalone.mxml
<mx:Application ...properties>
    <myComponents:UIAndFunctionalityComponent/>
</mx:Application>

//appNameModular.mxml
<MyModuleBase ...properties>
    <myComponents:UIAndFunctionalityComponent/>
</mx:MyModuleBase>

If you’re not certain how to do this in practice (say, in Flash Builder), you can work under one project directory with two Flex Applications (Project -> Properties -> Flex Applications) or have two separate projects containing only the top-level MXML file with the source folders containing the remainder of the application in the build path (Project -> Properties -> Flex Build Path -> Source Path).

If I’ve got some misunderstanding as to how the modular version works, please let me know and I’ll attempt to correct my answer.