Flex Datagram Server

DatagramServer is small library for Flex+Parsley that allows you to set up and manage a UDP listener in your Air 2.5+ application.

UDP Packets in Flex Air apps

Datagram packets are ideal for gathering data from external devices without having to establish two-way persistent socket connections. Perfect for gathering logs, benchmark data, statistics, …etc.

Note: You can send and receive UDP packets in Air 2.5+, but only on desktop Air apps. MobileDevice, extendedMobileDevice, tv, extendedTV profiles are unsupported.

You can download the DatagramServer swc from github:

https://github.com/mere/DatagramServer

Setup

1. In your Parsley contextbuilder register DatagramServerContext:
   
   <parsley:FlexConfig type="{ DatagramServerContext }"/>

   <parsley:FlexConfig type="{ DatagramServerContext }"/>

2. If you want to edit the datagram host and port from the UI, fastinject DatagramModel, then create a two way binding to .host and .port:
   
   <s:TextInput text="@{data.host}" width="120" />
   <s:TextInput text="@{data.port}" width="40" />

   <s:TextInput text="@{data.host}" width="120" />
   <s:TextInput text="@{data.port}" width="40" />

3. Start/Stop the Datagram server from any parsley-managed class, eg.::
   
   dispatcher(new Event(DatagramServerEvent.START));
   dispatcher(new Event(DatagramServerEvent.STOP));

   dispatcher(new Event(DatagramServerEvent.START));
   dispatcher(new Event(DatagramServerEvent.STOP));

4. To listen to incoming UDP packages, create a parsley messagehandler:
   
   [MessageHandler]
   public function dataReceived(e:DataReceivedEvent):void
   {
       logs.add(e.string);
       /**
       * you can also use:
       * e.ip     : returns the IP of the sender
       * e.data     : returns the packet as a bytearray
       * e.xml     : returns the packet as xml
       */
   }

   [MessageHandler]
   public function dataReceived(e:DataReceivedEvent):void
   {
       logs.add(e.string);
       /**
       * you can also use:
       * e.ip     : returns the IP of the sender
       * e.data     : returns the packet as a bytearray
       * e.xml     : returns the packet as xml
       */
   }

How to test your Datagram Listener

You can use Netcat to send udp packages. On a mac:

nc -u your.ip.address port

nc -u your.ip.address port

Example

Check out: https://github.com/mere/DatagramServerExample