A class's identifier is only as unique as its fully qualified name. You can
think of an ApplicationDomain as an Object with slots for each class as in:
var appdom:Object = {
"flash.display.DisplayObject" : flash.display.DisplayObject;
"mx.core.UIComponent": mx.core.UIComponent;
}
with the exception that, once a slot is set, you can't overwrite it:
first-in-wins. If two separate SWFs supply different definitions the second
one will lose out and that can cause issues with code that depends on the lost
definition. That is baked into the runtime.
What is also baked into the runtime is a lack of an API to take an object and
find its ApplicationDomain. This makes it impossible to write a universal,
works-everywhere, "get the class definition for this object".
That said, Flex has some infrastructure to allow a main Flex SWF to find the
ApplicationDomain of a child Flex SWF (but not any non-Flex child SWF) and
therefore take an object and find its ApplicationDomain and thus its class
definition. Automated Testing code could have leveraged this infrastructure,
but apparently didn't. Not sure why, probably because there is no official
documentation on how to do that, and maybe because it would fail for non-Flex
SWFs.
HTH,
-Alex
From: Nigel Magnay <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>
Reply-To: "[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>"
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>
Date: Thursday, October 3, 2013 2:16 AM
To: "[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>"
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>
Subject: Re: [flexcoders] Automation and Application Domains
Yes, it does seem a problem - hence me trying to figure out if it was a 'burned
in' limitation of the flash runtime, or something I could find a workaround for.
On Wed, Oct 2, 2013 at 6:58 PM, Alex Harui
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Even generating shim classes would result in conflicts if you have more than
one definition of a class you are trying to "shim" into the main
applicationdomain.
But if you can guarantee there isn't conflicts for a particular test scenario,
then maybe you can test by loading into the main app domain.
From: Nigel Magnay <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>
Reply-To: "[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>"
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>
Date: Tuesday, October 1, 2013 4:38 AM
To: "[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>"
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>
Subject: Re: [flexcoders] Automation and Application Domains
Yes, it seems to fail.
RIAtest has a component 'inspector', which shows the component tree. If my UI
component is in a different (child) application domain, it never appears in the
inspector (and events from manipulating it never get received).
When I raised a ticket against it (and asked if there were some API that I
could use to perhaps inform it more directly to my new application domains),
they pointed me to the supposed flex automation restriction - hence me starting
to dig to see if I might be able to overcome the restriction - perhaps by
generating shim classes or delegates..
On Fri, Sep 27, 2013 at 7:25 PM, Alex Harui
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Did you actually try it and found that it fails? I would think it should be
able to introspect child appdomains.
From: Nigel Magnay <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>
Reply-To: "[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>"
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>
Date: Friday, September 27, 2013 6:36 AM
To: "[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>"
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>
Subject: [flexcoders] Automation and Application Domains
We are using RIAtest, which uses flex automation to test some applications.
Reading the flex documentation, it contains the following:
Testing applications that load external libraries
... A library that is loaded at run time (including run-time shared libraries
(RSLs)) must be loaded into the ApplicationDomain of the loading application.
If the SWF file used in the application is loaded in a different application
domain, automated testing record and playback will not function properly.
This is particularly inconvenient for us; we load UI controls into separate
ApplicationDomains (all children of ApplicationDomain.currentDomain) because
they can have conflicting classnames, and this allows each form to be generated
in isolation, and they cannot interfere with each other. The thought of having
to refactor hundreds of classes is not appealing.
This seems to prevent RIAtest's inspector from finding child controls sourced
from that loader.
Is there any way around this restriction, perhaps by implementing some kind of
delegate class, or overriding the automation provider to allow it to callback
to discover the applicationdomains it needs to search?
