datechooser – stoimen's web log

Flex 3 DateChooser UTC issue

Stoimen — Wed, 20 May 2009 06:11:21 +0000

What I intend to do

The task can be described as it is. There’s a Flex 3 DateChooser component integrated with a custom timeline component. The problem occurs when exporting the data from the flash to the browser. Than I write the unix timestamp to the url of the browser. Of course I’m using date.getTime() in Flex.

getTime()

Applying getTime() to any object of type Date in Flex results in a unix timestamp with included milliseconds. Of course the server side technology which in our case is PHP should devide by 1000 to remove the milliseconds.

The problem

The database and the server side script language use a UTC dates. The problem is the Flash functions getFullYear, getMonth, etc. don’t deal with UTC. Of course you can switch to getUTCFullYear, getUTCMonth, etc. but than comes the real problem.

The DateChooser …

When you’re using dates in Flex with no UTC in mind everything’s OK. You have the DateChooser component. Clicking on the 16th of May 2009 results in

Alert.show(date.toString());

which prints 16th of May 2009, which appears to be OK. Yes but the date.getTime() is still using the non-UTC time. If you’re using UTC, and suddenly print that kind of a message:

Alert.show(date.toUTCString());

Then for 16th of May 2009 you receive 15th of May 2009. Which is really bad.

No workaround

Unfortunately I didn’t find any workaround till now. I hope I’ll soon.

Download Custom Flex 3 DateChooser

stoimen — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 08:51:29 +0000

To download the date chooser source: click here

Please, provide any feedback about the datechooser and feature requests.

I’ll put the component documentation soon.

Flex 3 Custom DateChooser

stoimen — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 08:48:55 +0000

I searched so much about a custom DateChooser component in Flex 3, that I decided to make one by myself. My criteria is to have ComboBoxes for both months and years. I simply merged the ComboBox component with DateChooser and there is the beta release. Please fill free to comment and report any bugs or feature requests.

Demo is here:

Free download: here

Flex 3 Custom Preloader

stoimen — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 06:26:33 +0000

Before to start I’ll put a link to my post with download and sample of a custom preloader you can use in your applications: /2009/02/25/flex-3-custom-preloader-download/

If there’s a problem with making a custom flex 3 preloader, there is the solution. The problem after that is to place it at the center of the stage. But there is a solution again. Just because the Application is not available yet, doesn’t mean that the preloader cannot be positioned correctly.

Just don’t forget to use the stage.width and height properties, as shown in the example, and use that after added on stage event is fired.

Look carefully at the example!

I recently posted a sample with free donwload of custom datechooser. The sample can be found on:

/2009/02/25/flex-3-custom-datechooser/

and the source can be downloaded here:

/2009/02/25/download-custom-flex-3-datechooser/