Custom GeocodeProcessor with Swiz

One of the interesting features of Swiz 1.0 (still pre-release) is the ability to create custom metadata processors. To get more familiar with the idea, check this docs page. Note that some items from the docs has changed, such as you no longer extend MetadataProcessor, but extend BaseMetadataProcessor.

There is a Yahoo Finance Processor, a URLMapping Processor and even a MediateSignalProcessor. It all looked a bit in depth to me, I’m still what I would call an intermediate in my dev skills at this point, but I decided to take a crack at it.

Since most of what I do is based on the ESRI Flex API, I decided to try making a GeocodeProcessor. The idea is that you can set up a Processor that would act as your delegate to a geocoding service. This way, you could just move it around different projects using swiz and simplify the task. I pretty much just used the geocode example from the samples pages.

You can view an example here and I also put it on github here. By the way, my first github attempt, and I was quite lost for a bit. I’ll need to learn how to use it for future projects. As for the application, when you search for an address, click the Center Map button up top. This is a hurdle I’ll explain shortly.

First off, thank you to those who already created some custom processor examples. I would have been scratching my head for a while trying to find what works and what doesn’t. First, part of the need to do something like a Geocode Processor requires that you be able to send a new address request to get updated information. I thought of using the idea of copying objects from the Mediate tag that was used in the URLMapping processor, but I couldn’t figure out how to do that AND send an updated object back to the application.

I went a different route, and one that is probably not recommended and that was to make a public getter/setter in the GeocodeProcessor to hold the Address object that could be updated from my application. In my case, I added the object to my Swiz via binding as can be seen here. Then my processor would listen for changes on the object and run a new geocoding task as can be seen here.

As I mentioned before, I had an issue that required I add a Center to Map button. For the life of me, I could not figure out how to let the map know that an address had been added to the map. I’m sure this is just a matter of finding the proper events to listen to or maybe setting my Swiz initialization, but I couldn’t figure it out. I thought I should at least mention it.

I was actually a little surprised it worked, but also pretty happy with how simple the concept of using a custom processor is once you go through the process of writing one. For geogeek ESRI Flex devs, I can think of a couple of uses such as maybe a processor for creating a GraphicsLayer set that is commonly used in your organization or possible some other tasks. Like I said earlier, I’m still not completely happy with having a public variable on the processor that needs to be updated manually, but this was mostly just a proof of concept for me and a learning experience.

So if you’re interested in the idea of custom processors, I say give it a shot. Go grab your source for Swiz here. Now that I’ve done it once, I think I may like to try doing some more.