How to develop for Android in Flash Builder?

Question

I've been playing around with creating a game in Adobe Flash and wondering how I might deploy it on Android? At the moment it is spread over about 100 actionscript swf and mp3 files and Flash Builder pulls them all together into a single SWF when I publish my release.

I've been reading up on Adobe AIR which seems to be how Adobe packages their stuff for Android and iOS. Flash Builder will let you create Flex Mobile projects that will compile for Android. However, the docs I've come across only discuss editing the .mxml file to add standard GUI widgets. I want to present a richly animated interactive game, not a web form. I'd prefer to design the GUI myself using MovieClips and ActionScript and just have AIR wrap around this, but I can't find any info on how to do it.

The Adobe Animate editor (formerly Flash Pro) does let you create special AIR for Android files which will build .apk files, but as far as I can tell this is only for small projects of only a few files. At least I don't know how I would use one of these files as the master file in a large multifile Flash project. I also wouldn't know how to integrate it into the Flash Builder build process.

Anyhow, I'd like to continue to use Flash Builder and am trying to figure out the correct work flow to be able to design graphically rich programs (and not with widgets) and have them build to Android targets.

Found a solution. I needed to create a new ActionScript Mobile project. Then I just linked the project to my existing game (right click on project then select Properties, then added in the source path of my original project under ActionScript Build Path/Source Path. Also checked the name of the project under Project References). Then I just added my game's root Sprite to the stage. — kitfox

T. Richter T. Richter · Accepted Answer · 2016-09-09T14:56:07

Create a Flex Mobile Project.
You will at least need one mxml file, e.g. MyApp.mxml, basing on "Application". From there you can run your as3-Code. I think, this is as minimal as it can get with Flex:

<s:Application xmlns:fx="http://ns.adobe.com/mxml/2009" 
			   xmlns:s="library://ns.adobe.com/flex/spark"
			  creationComplete="onCreate(event)" >

	<fx:Script>
		<![CDATA[
				
			protected function onCreate(event:FlexEvent):void
			{
				// Execute your Flash code here
			}
		
			
		]]>
	</fx:Script>	
		
</s:Application>

Go to "Project"->"Properties"->"Flex Build Packaging" and make sure you enabled Android Packaging. You'll need a certificate, too. This might be self-signed.
Go to "Project"->"Export Release Build". The rest should be self-explanatory.

How to develop for Android in Flash Builder?

1 Answers