The Fearless ActionScript 3.0 Design Pattern Catalog Soldiers On
I was able to get the second installment of the ActionScript 3.0 Design Pattern Catalog finished. For a running start, you can see the Creative/Structural Catalog online. As you will recall, in the First Part of the Catalog project, I used a dual-factory framework for creating the patterns. Other than the work adding new text files and drawing the class diagrams, updating was a piece of cake. I had to make changes to the CatData.as file to add the names of the Structural patterns, but otherwise, all I did was fill out text files. It was like magic. Everything else just took care of itself. (It’s always nice to see design patterns at work!) Figure 1 shows the progress:
Figure 1: The Added Structural Classes
It doesn’t look any different than the original other than the fact that it now has more than twice as many design patterns.
AIR Version Available
Ben Beaumont helpfully pointed out that instead of trying to grab 156 individual files, I could just grab the two type folders (Creational and Structural) in the AIR version and it worked fine. Click the download button to get the AIR Design Pattern Catalog for a very handy reference on your desktop:
I put the files online so that you can download them to see how everything works together. You will notice that they’re the same as the initial set except you now have a lot more patterns.
If you feel creepy for not helping out, you can be a big help by proof-reading the content and see if mistakes were made. (If you find any, send them to me, and I’ll fix them.) Also, it would be über cool if someone could translate the text files from English into other languages. I’d like to put up editions in as many languages as could be contributed.
In the meantime, enjoy the updated catalog.
The Actionscript 3.0 Design Pattern Catalog: Structural Patterns by William B. Sanders, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Bill Sanders
Hey, i just downloaded the files and managed to make an AIR app. Just use the ClientAIR.fla file and published. Seems to work fine. I can send it along if you want.
Hi Ben,
Thank you very much. Please do send it, and I’ll put it up online for everyone else. I did use the ClientAIR.fla and had no joy!
Kindest regards,
Bill
Hi Bill and thanks as always to sharing your work and working for us on this site. Maybe the next step is to prepare some “structural” classes of each pattern. A “long” time ago I did a port (working indeed!) of all the patterns from “dofactory.com” (c# D.p.) to Actionscript 3.0. If you want…
Cheers.
Hi Jadd,
Sounds interesting, but I’m not sure what you’d like. Do you mean that we should have examples of the Structural design patterns? If so, we have examples of the Adapter, Composite, and Decorator in our book, and we have examples of the Bridge, Composite (again), Decorator (again), Facade, Flyweight, and Proxy here on our blog.
If I’ve missed the point, let me know what you mean by “structural” classes in this context. Do you have an example I could look at? I looked at Dofactory, and their “structural” examples are similar to our “minimalist” or “conceptual” examples.
Anyway, we love new ideas, and let’s hear more about yours.
Kindest regards,
Bill
… I meant “minimalistic” yes (and also “real-world” like that site said).
Hi Jadd,
I think between our book and this blog we should be all set then. In the book, each pattern has a minimalist and one or more ‘real-world’ examples. The Flyweight (on our blog) has a multi-part article with both conceptual and real-world examples. The Bridge pattern only has a simple example (and probably could use something real-world)–maybe you have an idea that we could build. The Facade is sort of a funny one for building a ‘real-world’ example because it’s essentially a way of providing a unified interface to a more complex subsystem. Maybe you could suggest a subsystem and I could build a Facade for it. Finally, while we have a very simple, minimalist Proxy example here on the blog, we’ve got a Symmetric Proxy pattern in our book that illustrates how to create simultaneous movement in a game. (It’s sort of like the Three Bears tale — “too little” and “too much” Proxy.) Maybe you could suggest a real-world proxy example (not from Do-factory—we don’t want to be copy cats!)
Anyhow, Jadd, I like your idea, and let’s hear more so we can build something.
Kindest regards,
Bill
Hi Bill,
mine was only a suggestion. Maybe the air application and thw web one could be released with a “minimalist” approch source code and a “real_world” example for each pattern. This was my not that clever idea.
Hi Jadd,
Well, it’s something to think about. It would be great to have an AIR app that you could look up all of this stuff. In the meantime, we’ll just put it on the blog and make the files available.
Kindest regards,
Bill