Flash Builder: How to Add a Spark Group Background Color

Ideally, things would be a lot simpler if spark groups had a background color property that could be set.  But of course, that is not the case in Flex / Flash Builder.  However, there is a minor work around that one can follow to obtain background colors for spark groups.

<s:Group>
    <s:Rect width="100%" height="100%">
        <s:fill><s:SolidColor color="0x336699" /></s:fill>
    </s:Rect>
    <s:VGroup>
        <s:Label text="group content..." />
        <s:Label text="group content..." />
        <s:Label text="group content..." />
    </s:VGroup>
</s:Group>

Since vgroup doesn’t have a background color property, you can make a rectangle behind it to have desired background properties.  Flex also isn’t very functional with rectangles unless they are in a group of some kind. (i.e. in a scroller tag)  So that is why it’s best to wrap both the rectangle and the vgroup in a regular grouping segment. (same applies to hgroup, tilegroup, and other sparkgroups)

*NOTE: Put the rectangle first.  Otherwise the rectangle will be covering the spark group before it.  In flex, the last element being produced is placed in front of the previous item.

HTTPService Request in Flex for Mobile

Took a while to figure out the error being returned by the phone when trying to post data from the phone to a form.

>> Error #2032: Stream Error.

Reading up on this error, it could happen for a number of reasons. The most common of which being along the lines of “This error appears to occur when the url or file is blocked or not found by HTTPService call.”

Although for me, if you are correctly connected to the page you want to make a request to, the key was to inspect the response it was receiving from the server. It wasn’t really a flex error, but rather an issue of what the PHP hosted form was returning. When submitting a post form normally, it doesn’t matter what the response text is. Although, if it’s being called by a mobile device, it should be returning an XML or json response based on the status of the request being made.