Robotlegs and Signals

Just a short note for this, the first Flash Friday post of 2011. Just last week I started a new job in the social game space. It is a very exciting opportunity to work with some new people and learn new things. One thing to learn is the code base that they use, some which is open source. Two OS projects that I am now working with that I've never worked with before have caught my eye. These two projects are Robotlegs and Signals. First there is Robotlegs, an MVCS framework that is similar to PureMVC but if you've used any MVCS framework ( such as Cairngorm ) the concepts are similar. Robotlegs is cool because it does a really good job of keeping classes well decoupled through the use of metatags and injection. If you code any games or rich internet applications with flash I highly recommend giving it a look to see what you can use from it.

Second is AS3 Signals. Signals is an Observer pattern framework that you can use instead, or in conjunction with, the actionscript event model. I've been a fan of the observer pattern for a while, using the AsBroadcaster class back in AS2. When AS3 came around I relished in its event model, not because it was perfect but because it was better than using AsBroadcaster ( or rolling your own setup ). Signals improves upon some of the shortcomings of the AS3 event model in a few different ways.

All in all these are the two big new frameworks I am using at my new gig and I plan to share some lessons as I learn them.  There is also much more that I'll learn about as well and I plan to share them as well. For now, check out Robotlegs and AS3 Signals and see what bits of them you can use or just get some good ideas for your own code.  I hope if you do you'll share them in the comments.

Have you used either of of these frameworks? What do you think? Any gotchas you need to watch out for?  I'd love to hear what you've encountered in the comments below.