Frameworks in the Flex/Flash world.

Some say that if a technology has a lot of frameworks, then it is a sign of maturity. You might argue with that, but still I think it is interesting to know what are the available frameworks in the Flex/Flash world.

MVC frameworks and Dependency Injection

• Cairngorm (Adobe Open Source) - MVC framework
• PureMVC (Open Source) - MVC framework
• Mate (Open Source) - Mate is a tag-based, event-driven Flex framework
• Swiz (Open Source) - Metadata-based Dependency Injection framework
• Spring ActionScript (Open Source) - Dependency Injection framework part of SpringSource

Articles to get some idea about what these frameworks offer:

• FrameworkQuest 2008: Introduction
• Choosing a Flex framework

Testing frameworks and code coverage

• FlexUnit (Adobe Open Source) - conceptually based on famous JUnit
• Funit (Open Source) - Metadata Driven Unit Testing for Flex
• asUnit (Open Source) – Unit Testing Framework
• fluint (Open Source) – Unit Testing with further richer asynchronous support and support for integration-level testing
• FlexMonkey (Open Source) - UI testing, capture replay
• Selenium (Open Source) - API for Selenium
• FlashSelenium (Open Source) - Selenium RC Client driver extension
• HP QuickTest Professional 9.5 (Commercial License)
• mock-as3 (Open Source) - mock object library
• FlexCover (Open Source) - code coverage
• FunFX - functional testing framework
• Mock4AS - a simple Mock Object Library for ActionScript3

Building and Continue Integration

• Ant task (Adobe Open Source) - comes with Flex SDK
• flex-mojos (Open Source) – Set of maven plugins
• ServeBox (Open Source) – Flex maven plugin
• Flex Maven Reports (Open Source) – Maven reports for Flex
• Hudson (Open Source) – Continuous Integration engine
• CruiseControl.NET (Open Source) - Continuous Integration engine

Flash 3D Engines

• AlternativaPlatform
• Papervision3D
• Away3D
• Sandy3d (OpenSource)

Server side libraries/frameworks for Flex

PHP:

• Zend AMF - remoting library, part of the Zend Framework
• AMFPHP - remoting library
• WebORB for PHP - remoting and data messaging (producer/consumer)
• SabreAMF - remoting library

Java:

• LiveCycle Data Services ES (Adobe, commercial license) - remoting, data messaging, data management, proxy, real time data pushing and synchronization, paging
• BlazeDS (Adobe Open Source) - remoting, data messaging, proxy
• Graniteds (Open Source) - remoting, EJB 3 services, data push
• WebORB for Java - remoting, data management, real time data messaging
• Pimento (Open Source) - data management

ColdFusion:

• LiveCycle Data Services ES (Adobe, commercial license) - remoting, data messaging, data management, proxy, data pushing and synchronization, paging
• BlazeDS (Adobe Open Source) - remoting, data messaging, proxy

.NET:

• WebORB for .NET - data management, real-time messaging
• FluorineFX - remoting, data messaging, data management (partial)

Ruby on Rails:

• WebORB for Ruby on Rails - remoting
• RubyAMF (Open Source) - remoting

Python:

• PYAMF - remoting
• DjangoAMF - remoting

Uncategorized

• RIAlity - an advanced arquitecture for Flex and JEE with tooling (Eclipse Plugins) that allows to be more productive and deliver better RIA products.
• Flite http://code.google.com/p/fliteframework/
• Asmock - http://asmock.sourceforge.net/
• Mock4as - http://code.google.com/p/mock4as/
• Another functional testing framework is FunFX, which was presented at Flex Camp Oslo: http://funfx.rubyforge.org/