Flex on BSP

The Flex on BSP (FLOB) project represent a library of SAP BSP Extension Elements that generate Adobe Flex instead of the standard BSP Extension output of HTML and JavaScript.

They are designed to make it easy for existing BSP developers to render Adobe Flex User Interfaces without having any knowledge of ActionScript or MXML and to allow BSP developers to work entirely within the ABAP Workbench.

An empty, compiled SWF file is loaded into the Flash Player within the Browser. UI elements are then added to the framework via JavaScript and the Adobe Flex/AJAX bridge (FABridge). This allows for a simple interface relying only on JavaScript to manipulate the User Interface. To make the process even easier, these BSP Extensions encapsulate the JavaScript and map concepts to BSP friendly constructs. BSP Server Side Eventing and Data Binding are both supported even with the Flex User Interface Elements.

Also for all Input Enabled Flex UI elements, an HTML Document Form Field is also generated hidden to the user. On Server Side events, these form fields are populated with the current values in the Flex UI Elements; causing a post back to the server that looks exactly like an HTML Form. This makes the transition from HTML/JavaScript based UIs to Flex ones almost completely invisible to the developer.

Also included is an application (zbspext_flex) that is designed to showcase the abilities of the Adobe Flex Extensions of BSP and to provide code samples of many of the commonly used UI patterns.