Adobe AIR Development

[sigmasoft]

A rudimentary search didn't turn up anything on this topic as far as I could see...

I'm currently researching the viability of pushing real-time data e.g. stock quotes to an AIR app running on a Playbook.

Is this possible? If so, what is the recommended mechanism for doing so?

Can one use LCDS/BlazeDS to push the data the same way as would be done to push data to a desktop AIR application?

Can the same data receiving/handling codebase be used in both the desktop version and Playbook versions of the AIR app?

Any help, much appreciated.

[jtegen]

BB/RIM "push" API has not been released yet. You can use LCDS/BlazeDS and should be OK, but will need to manage "lose" network connections. I had push service in one of our early apps, but the device had so much problem to maintain a solid connection to our local WiFi, that I had to pull the functionality. Currently, re-investigating more mobile friendly services.

[sigmasoft]

Thanks for the info. Are you saying the problem is specific to the device WiFi connectivity? i.e. is it less reliable than a laptop with WiFi running a desktop AIR application for some particular reason?

To confirm, aside from the connectivity issues, you had BlazeDS pushing data to an AIR app running on a PlayBook using the same code you would use to push to a desktop AIR app?

[jtegen]

There were reported WiFi issues in the first couple of TBOS releases. I have good days and bad days with my WiFi where I have to reboot the device fairly often when my PB is connected to it. This could be just my WiFi. I've ordered a new WiFi device to see if that will help (existing device is probably 5+ years old). I was not using BlazeDS for pub/sub, but the approach was the same (persistent connections). The same code was used via desktop (AIR) and PlayBook. Worked fine as desktop/simulator, but on the actual device, dropped connections all the time until the app just crashed.

[JimmyO]

My 'Name This Song' Playbook app (http://appworld.blackberry.com/webstore/content/39169?lang=en) uses essentially the same code between an Air app, a .swf on facebook and various other gamesites and the PB app .  I use the socket.connect AS3 command to open a connection from the clients to the server.  It is a 'real time' game where players compete against one another so a player's score is sent to the server and then pushed back out to all the clients in the same match.  To the best of my knowledge, there have been no specific issues on wifi connected PlayBooks.

[sigmasoft]

Awesome. Thanks for the info. What I'm getting is that there doesn't seem to be any inherent sandbox limitations specific to the PlayBook in terms of connectivity i.e. an AIR app running on a PlayBook can communicate with the outside world in exactly the same way as an AIR app running on a PlayBook....

Thanks again.

[jtegen]

That is correct. Just keep in mind that it is a mobile device and connections can be easily lost, so you application needs to manage this (warn user; active or passive, reconnect, etc.). There are some AIR APIs that are not supported on the PB that deal with network connectivity.