Hessian Binary Web Service Protocol Adds Adobe Flash/Flex Support

by Jon Rose on Sep 19, 2007 |

Last week, Caucho Technology, Inc. announced Flash and Flex support to their Hessian framework with a 100% ActionScript implementation. Hessian is a binary web service protocol developed by Caucho. Their open source implementation is available under the Apache License. In the press release announcing Flash support, Caucho Technology's Emil Ong detailed the addition:

Flash developers creating RIAs need fast and easy communication to Web Services. Hessian fits this requirement perfectly. With Hessian's growing popularity as a Web Service protocol, we wanted to make these services available to developers targeting the Flash platform.

Ong described using the protocol in more detail:

Hessian isn't a protocol that you have to plan your whole application around; you can add it in at any stage and it's just plug and go. Flash developers now have that flexibility.

The Caucho Hessian RIA Demo demonstrates integration between a Java and Flex application in detail. The basics of integrating the two are very straightforward. On the Java side, the service class simply extends the HessianServlet from the API, and is mapped in web.xml with standard JEE syntax. Flex connects to the service in the MXML page using the HessianService class:

<hessian:HessianService xmlns:hessian="hessian.mxml.*" id="service" destination="words"/>

Hessian is a well rounded web service alternative that offers support for Java, C#, Ruby, PHP, and Python in addition to the new ActionScript support. It should offer RIA developers using Adobe Flash and Flex another good alternative for integrating with business services.

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Community comments

wow! by Codelicious ^ Posted

Great news indeed, but... by Fernando Olcoz Posted

Re: Great news indeed, but... by Tamas J Posted

wow! by Codelicious ^

this effectively renders FDS/LCDS useless if only doing basic RemoteObject stuff... sounds very exciting!!!

Great news indeed, but... by Fernando Olcoz

This could be great for all those applications where web services are being used but RPC is a better solution and FDS is not a practical or cost effective proposition.

Sadly, it ain't working for me in Flex 2.0.1, as the compiler refuses to override final method getOperation() in hessian.client.HessianService (which is quite understandable).

Re: Great news indeed, but... by Tamas J

Since I installed SDK hotfix 1-3, getOperation is not final (which is more understandable :)