Building AS3 Files From TextMate

Once again, here is another actionscript post. One of the things that got really annoying to me was re-running the builder to create my swf and test the actionscript I had been working on. I would modify an as file in TextMate, then click on iTerm, hit up and enter to rerun the last command, and then view the swf in Finder. Way too much work. I have a bundle in TextMate called John’s Helpers. Inside that, I created a command called ‘Build File’, set the activation to Key Equivalent ctrl-b and the source to source.actionscript. Below is the code that does the dirty work.

#!/usr/bin/env ruby -w

$LOAD_PATH << "#{ENV['TM_SUPPORT_PATH']}/lib"
require "web_preview"
require "open3"

html_header("Building ActionScript File")

if ENV.has_key?("AS_DOCUMENT_CLASS")
	filename = File.basename(ENV["AS_DOCUMENT_CLASS"])
	dir = File.dirname(ENV["AS_DOCUMENT_CLASS"])
else
	filename = File.basename(ENV['TM_FILEPATH'])
	dir = ENV["TM_DIRECTORY"]
end

puts "

Building #{filename} in #{dir}

"

swf = filename.gsub(".as", ".swf")
dir = dir.gsub(' ', '\ ') # fix space in path

puts "<pre>"

Open3.popen3("cd #{dir} && /Applications/flex_sdk_2/bin/mxmlc #{filename}") do |stdin, stdout, stderr|
	puts stdout.gets
	if error = stderr.gets
		puts "\n\n" + error
	else
		system("open #{File.join(dir, swf)}")
	end
end

# system("cd #{dir} && /Applications/flex_sdk_2/bin/mxmlc #{filename}")
puts "</pre>"

html_footer

Assumptions

1. You have the free Flex SDK
2. The Flex SDK is installed in your Applications folder (ie: /Applications/flex_sdk_2/bin/mxmlc)

Two Ways of Using

1) If you simply have a file open and you hit ctrl-b, it will create a swf of the same name in the same directory and then open it using Finder. Simple enough.

2) If you have a TextMate project saved with multiple ActionScript files, you can set a Project Specific Shell Variable named AS_DOCUMENT_CLASS equal to the full path to your main document class (ie: /Users/nunemaker/flash/carousel3/classes/Main.as). If that environment variable is set, no matter what ActionScript file you have open in your project, the main document class will be the only file built when you hit ctrl-b.