Since I was deeply involved in Flex Builder support for working with .NET I thought that it would be a good idea to write some articles on how you can use these technologies together. I will create a “Hello World” project but the focus will be on how you can better make use of the available tools.

For tooling I will be using Flex Builder and Visual Web Developer 2008 Express Edition (VWD).

First let’s create a simple ASP.NET Web Service project using VWD:

I slightly modified the HelloWorld method in Service.cs to receive a parameter:

[WebMethod]

public string HelloWorld(String name) {

    return “Hello “ + name + “! Nice talking to you!”;

}

Now let’s get into Flex Builder and try to get something from the .NET Server. First we will create a new Flex Project on top of the .NET one. To do that click on New->Flex Project and choose ASP.NET as the server technology:

Make sure the location is the same as the VWD .NET project. Now run the default MXML file to start the ASP.NET Developer Server.

Next we will generate the glue code for calling the Web Service using the Import Web Service Wizard. Choose Data -> Import Web Service (WSDL) from the Flex Builder menu. On the first page the main source folder is selected by default. You can leave it like this. On the second page you need to choose the WSDL URI. When you launched the MXML application the ASP.NET Developer Server should have started by default on port 3000 (see the tray icon). In this case the WSDL URL should be something like http://localhost:3000/testDotNet/Service.asmx?WSDL.

The third page should look like this:

Now you should have some typed AS classes that provide easy access the .NET Web Service methods. The cool thing about this is that Flex Builder knows now how to do autocompletion on Web Service calls. So making a little application that will showcase this is just too easy:

<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”utf-8″?>

<mx:Application xmlns:mx=”http://www.adobe.com/2006/mxml” layout=”absolute”>

    <mx:Script>

        <![CDATA[

            import mx.controls.Alert;

            import generated.webservices.HelloWorldResultEvent;

            import generated.webservices.Service;

            public function sayHello():void {

                var service:Service = new Service();

                service.addhelloWorldEventListener(

                    function (event:HelloWorldResultEvent):void {

                        Alert.show(event.result);

                    });

                service.helloWorld(myName.text);

            }

        ]]>

    </mx:Script>

    <mx:TextInput x=”176″ y=”171″ id=”myName”/>

    <mx:Text x=”70″ y=”173″ text=”Enter Your Name”/>

    <mx:Button x=”344″ y=”171″ label=”Click to receive greeting” click=”sayHello()”/>

</mx:Application>

flex, flex builder