Flex Builder License and Automation – Flex 3

Automation is a premium feature in Flex Builder 3.  So to get the complete functionality of automation, user need to have a valid professional version of Flex Builder.

Here  I am mentioning the details of the same applicable to Flex3 or   FlexBuilder3.

Automation – Prerequisite

User need to have the automation swc’s (available in FlexBuilder)

User should have automation libraries linked in to the application using the -include-libraries.

At the time of application compilation, a valid professional license should be provided.

 

How to Provide the license ?

Option 1 – Using Flex Builder

If you have FlexBuilder installed, Help -> Manage Licenses . Here enter your professional key. FlexBuilder will inform whether the license was valid. This operation would have created a file in the following location with the required syntax. For windows : C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Adobe\Flex\license.properties  and /home/user/.Adobe/Flex (for UNIX and Linux)

This file will have the details as follows.

flexbuilder3=<your key>

Option 2 – Manually providing the file

If you don’t have FB installed on that machine, create a file as mentioned above and place it under the specified location.

Option 3-  Provide in the command.

If you are using a script to compile your application you can provide the license details as additional arguments to your compiler.

the syntax is as follows.

-licenses.license <product> <serial-number>   i.e  

-licenses.license  flexbuilder3 xxx-yyy-zzzzzzz

Option 4-  Specify in the flexconfig.xml file of your sdk.

<flex-config>

<licenses>

<license>

<product>flexbuilder3</product>

<serial-number>PUT NUMBER HERE</serial-number>

</license>

</licenses>

…

</flex-config>

 Note: Ensure that level of  <licenses> tag is just under the main <flex-config> .

 

Once you have provided the license don’t forget to recompile the application. License information is embedded in the application.  It is not checked at run time.

How do you know whether the licensing worked ?

If you don’t have a valid professional license, you will be restricted to perform only 30 operations (30 record or 30 replay) on the application.

Note: Using the license.properties inside flex sdk is applicable only for flex versions lesser than flex3.0.  i,e if you are using flex3.0 or higher, license needs to be applied using one of the ways mentioned above.

Happy Flex Automation!

Heard from a user about using the license when using flex wih maven, Flex-Mojos

The format of giving license in this scenario can be as follows

<plugins>

           <plugin>

<groupId>org.sonatype.flexmojos</groupId>

<artifactId>flexmojos-maven-plugin</artifactId>

<version>${flex-mojos.version}</version>

<extensions>true</extensions>

<configuration>

<licenses>

<flexbuilder3>the-client-fb-number-here</flexbuilder3>

</licenses>

<targetPlayer>10.0.0</targetPlayer>

<compiledLocales>

<locale>en_US</locale>

</compiledLocales>

<resourceBundlePath>${basedir}/src/main/locales/{locale}</resourceBundlePath>

<allowSourcePathOverlap>true</allowSourcePathOverlap>

<contextRoot>radon_java_webapp</contextRoot>

<showWarnings>true</showWarnings>

<sourceFile>Main.mxml</sourceFile>

</configuration>

</plugin>

</plugins>

Note that we use the latest flexmojos plugin, the groupId changed: it is org.sonatype.flexmojos