I’ve written a small example to show how to call REST services from Flex.

See working example: click here

Source code: click here

The sample is source code enabled.
Accessing REST services with Flex is pretty simple. The main work done in the code is done by the following code:

<mx:HTTPService id=”yahoo_image_search”
url=”http://search.yahooapis.com/ImageSearchService/V1/imageSearch”>
<mx:request>
<appid>get your id from yahoo</appid>
<query>{input.text}</query>
</mx:request>
</mx:HTTPService>

Here we are calling the REST API with HTTP Service and passing it two required parameters:
appid - The application ID. See Application IDs for more information.
query - The query to search for. Use + to include terms, - to exclude terms, and put quotes around “exact phrase”.

You can find the complete description of the Yahoo! Image Search API here - http://developer.yahoo.com/search/image/V1/imageSearch.html

The response returned by the API is in XML format:

<ResultSet xmlns:xsi=”http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance” xmlns=”urn:yahoo:srchmi” xsi:schemaLocation=”urn:yahoo:srchmi http://search.yahooapis.com/ImageSearchService/V1/ImageSearchResponse.xsd” totalResultsAvailable=”190145″ totalResultsReturned=”2″ firstResultPosition=”1″>
<Result>
<Title>Madonna photo Madonna 6200315</Title>
<Summary />
<Url>
http://www.poster.net/madonna/madonna-photo-madonna-6200315.jpg</Url>

Hence, to access the main results we need to access the <Result> node inside of <ResultSet>, which is pretty state forward with our Datagrid.

Continuing with the Flex APAC seminar series we are going to have our 3rd Flex Online Seminar (webinar), here are the details:

Topic: “Getting on the Flex Highway – How to get up to speed with Flex”
Speaker: Raghunath Rao(http://raghuonflex.wordpress.com)
Level: Beginners
Time: 4:00 pm (IST) on Wednesday 19th June, 2007
(to check the time for your timezone see here: TimeAndDate World Clock)

Meeting URL: http://my.adobe.acrobat.com/flexapacseminar/
(Just click here to enter the meeting room when the seminar starts)

Raghu will talk about the various resources that are available on the net to get upto speed on Flex.

For those of you who use Salesforce.com and want to build Flex applications using the Salesforce AS3 api, do checkout this online seminar:

http://www.apexdevnet.com/events/flexonapex_t2/registration.php

Time: Wednesday, 27th June 2007. 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM PDT (for your timezone click here)

James Ward (Adobe) and Adam Gross (Salesforce) are going to give a technical introductory session on build such applications.

Flex FUG is coming to amchi Mumbai!
We are having the first Flex User Group Meeting on Saturday, so be there.

Date: Saturday, 16th June 2007

Time: 4:00 pm to 6:00 pm

Venue:
Barista cafe,
15 A Jilkar House,
Next to Dena Bank,
Keluskar Road,
North Shivaji Park.
Dadar(W) - Mumbai

Flex 3 Beta

AIR (formerly known as Apollo)
have been released just a few moments ago.

Go check it out!