Wow, thanks - that's very helpful!

Why are you of the mind that you need a special version of PureMVC?

Oh, what I meant was actually not "a special version" but rather an extension to the existing framework (btw. yes, I'm working with Java). For example I was thinking that I would create a ProxyAgent which extends the Proxy class and adds in agent-specific code that allows the proxy to be run separately (possible in a different agentscape location), without needing to be concerned about which concrete applications make use of it.

Well, the PureMVC actors (mediators, proxies, commands) are already have their own way of communicating (notifications). But usually these actors work together to perform the work of a core or an application. I imagine a modular approach where PureMVC cores are the agents of the system is more likely what you want.

The basic idea is to have different agents for data (~> proxies), presentation (~> mediators ??) and "applications" (~> facade+controller). I might have to rethink this and use different cores for each... it's a work in progress. ;-)

You want to encapsulate much of the UI behavior in the component itself as possible. With Flex, it is possible to do this with Flex view states. So you can have a component receives data and change its visual aspect to display or edit data.

So, if I understand this correctly I would for example - depending on the component library - have a LayoutComponent, which contains all my other ui-components (which in turn are controlled by their own mediators?), and which I would "request to be rendered". And that would then (probably somewhere inside to the component library) populate the response object respectively..?

(I am mainly asking because I have not decided on a component library yet, and have been trying to directly use a servlet's HttpRequest and Response object...)


Thanks for the extensive answer to my second question, it makes things much clearer!

Cheers,
Ben

Hi,

I have been looking at PureMVC for a current agentscape-based project which I'm working on. AgentScape is an agent operating system; in short it supports large-scale agent systems with multiple agents in different location which can communicate by sending messages to each other.

My project is about creating a web-based presentation "framework" for agent-based systems, and I feel that an MVC-based approach would generally fit nicely. The idea so far is to create a version of PureMVC which allows the different main components (commands, proxies, mediators) to be independent agents in the system.

I am not sure about a few things, 2 questions:

1) Is there a recommended way of working with Request/Response based UIs? As far as I understand, with flash it's possible to adjust individual user interface components as soon as changes are necessary; But with the Request/Response mechanism the whole interface (layout) usually needs to be re-constructed every time and only served to the client once complete.

2) How tightly coupled are different parts of the system? How much do they need to about each other? Notifications I can convert into inter-agent-messages when necessary I think, but I'm not sure about cases when e.g. mediators directly instantiate proxy-classes...

Thanks,
Ben