Whenever developers or companies look to build rich Internet geospatial applications or RIA’s in Flex, they usually turn to proprietary tools. ESRI, Google, yahoo etc; all provide Flex mapping API’s. But what about open source options?
Flex Open Source GeoSpatial Internet Applications
Over this last year, I have been working with two excellent open source Flex API’s. For non GIS mapping applications there is Modest Maps. For GIS; OpenScales. This is the Flex equivalent of OpenLayers. I wrote a more in depth article, which you can link to below, describing both Modest Maps and OpenScales:
http://www.webmapsolutions.com/open-source-flex-geospatial-solutions
Code Downloads
Some while ago Adobe asked me to write a tutorial on Modest Maps. This included a code download. You can link to this article below.
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flex/articles/interactive_maps.html
It should give you a good introduction to this excellent Flex API.
OpenScales is less mature than OpenLayers. But it continues to progress with community input. I usually learn best when I have access to code. So I decided to share some of what I had found out about OpenScales by providing two sample applications. The first is built using Flash Buillder 3 and the Flex 3.5 sdk:
http://www.webmapsolutions.com/open-source-flex-gis-solutions
I ported some functionality, notably the base maps, from Modest maps. With the release of the 1.2.2 OpenScales build and Flash Builder 4, I upgraded this application and made the code available from the link below:
http://www.webmapsolutions.com/open-source-gis-openscales-application-download
My goal was to help developers get started with OpenScales. With time I think this will be a really valuable asset for developing open source Web and Mobile geospatial applications in Flex.
Contact me at: rory<at> webmapsolutions <com>
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