Part 1. Getting started
In this part, we’ll do the necessary setup work to get to the fun stuff in the rest of the book. We’ll install everything, do a Flex and Rails version of “Hello World,” and then get user creation and login working in Rails and hook up the Flex UI to it.
This part contains three iterations:
- Iteration 1: “Why are we here? Where are we going?”—This iteration provides the motivation for the book, an understanding of the history of Flex and Rails and how they fit together, and an overview of the book.
- Iteration 2: “Hello World”—This iteration contains three separate sets of instructions (Windows or Mac OS X + Flex Builder 3, Windows + Flex SDK, and Mac OS X + Flex SDK) for installing everything we need and getting “Hello World” running. You only need to read the section that applies to you.
- Iteration 3: “Getting started”—In this iteration, we’ll set up MySQL and add account creation and login functionality to our Rails application, using the restful_authentication plugin. We’ll then hook up the Flex UI to use the Rails account creation and login functionality. Finally, we’ll set up the most minimal of tests. At the end of this iteration, we’ll have a good starting point for any Flex + Rails application.