The Haxe Toolkit is a increasingly popular solution when it comes to developing applications which run on multiple platforms. The presentation aims to outline its capabilities, as well as highlighting some available tools, when choosing Haxe for software development

1. Cross-platform Development
Introducing the Haxe Toolkit
by Romuald Halasz, 02.08.2014

2. A little bit about me
- started work with QuickBasic, BPascal, C++
- Visual Studio 2005, OpenGL, DirectX
- PHP, HTML, CSS, JavaScript
- Flash, Flex
- Haxe, NME
- currently hosting TGD Meetup

3. Presentation structure
Introduction to Haxe
- language features
Cross-platform aspects
- specific APIs
- target specific platforms

4. Getting acquainted with Haxe
A bit of history:
22 October 2005 by French developer Nicolas Cannasse
Haxe 2.0 was released in July 2008,
Haxe 3 was released in May 2013
open source
Toolkit:
- language
- standard library
- compiler

5. Language Specifics
- based on ECMAScript standard, similar to ActionScript
- strictly typed
- object oriented
- conditional compilation
- inline calls
- metadata
- type params, constraints, variance
- etc. (pattern matching, abstract types, string interpolation …)
- more info: http://haxe.org/documentation/introduction/language-features.html

6. What does it look like ?
class Test {
static function main():Void {
var people:Array = [
"Elizabeth" => "Programming",
"Joel" => "Design"
];
for (name in people.keys()) {
var job = people[name];
trace('$name does $job for a living!');
}
}
}

7. Language Architecture
- Haxe API
- platform-specific APIs
- libraries
- frameworks

9. Haxe Standard Library
- general classes
- system (requires platform compilation)
- target specific APIs
(cpp, cs, flash, php etc.)

10. Haxelib
- library manager
- CLI tool
- browse and download libraries:
http://lib.haxe.org/

11. Haxe and multiple platforms
Going cross-platform!
Let’s dive right into it.
first, a bit of context...

13. Targets and Use Cases
Name Kind Static typed Sys Use Cases
Flash byte code Yes No Games, Mobile
Neko byte code No Yes Web, CLI
ActionScript 3 source Yes Yes Games, Mobile, API
JavaScript source No No Web, Desktop, API
PHP source No Yes Web
C++ source Yes Yes Games, CLI, Mobile, Desktop
Java source Yes Yes CLI, Mobile, Desktop
C# source Yes Yes Mobile, Desktop
Python source No Yes CLI, Web, Desktop

14. Platform Use Cases
We will focus on:
- Mobile
- Desktop
- Web
- Games!

15. Library Spotlight: Lime
“A foundational Haxe framework for cross-platform
native development.”
- abstraction layer
- compile code to C++, JavaScript etc.
Structure
- CLI tools - platform-specific process
- native layer (C++, Objective-C, Java)
- Haxe wrapper

16. OpenFl, NME
- provide support for creating
cross-platform interfaces
- flash-like API (display, events,
text, external, net etc.)

17. Supported platforms
Take your pick!

18. OpenFl in practice
Targets:
Desktop: Windows, Mac, Linux
Mobile: iOS, Android, BlackBerry
Web: Tizen, Emscripten, HTML5
Exposes:
OpenGL, Audio, Input
Windowing
Useful native features

19. Haxe and Mobile
Targets: C++, HTML5
Tools:
- cross-platform APIs
- libraries: StablexUI, HaxeUI
For iOS and Android: Basis
HTML5 target works with PhoneGap

20. Targeting iOS, Android, BlackBerry
Android:
- Android SDK/NDK, Apache ANT, Java JDK
- supported by lime
iOS:
- Xcode required
- target Flash, publish using AIR
BlackBerry:
- OpenFl is compatible with BlackBerry Tablet SDK
- supported by lime

21. Desktop Targets
Targets: C++, HTML5
Tools:
Libraries: Waxe (Haxe + wxW)
HTML5 targets work with Node-socket
- app runtime
- based on Chromium and Node.js
https://github.com/rogerwang/node-webkit

22. Targeting Windows, Mac, Linux
Windows:
- Neko (no dependencies)
- C++, Visual Studio required
Mac:
- Neko
- C++, requires Xcode
Linux:
- g++, gcc-multilib required
!! Targeting restricted to current platform

23. Haxe on the Web
Client targets:
- JavaScript, ActionScript 3
Server targets:
- PHP, Node, Neko

24. Haxe Web - clients
Haxe and jQuery:
- Haxe js.jQuery API
- jQueryExternForHaxe (library)
- more recent jQuery version
- https://github.com/andyli/jQueryExternForHaxe

25. jQuery Example
$(document).ready(function(){
$("#myDiv").hide();
});
import JQuery;
class Main {
static public function main():Void {
new JQuery(function():Void {
new JQuery("#myDiv").hide();
});
}
}

26. Haxe Web - servers
Haxe JS Kit
https://github.com/clemos/haxe-js-kit
includes Node.js
- NPM libraries:
Mongoose, Connect.js, Express.js, Socket.io, Passport.js,
Atom-shell
Haxenode
- Node.js port for Haxe
http://haxenode.herokuapp.com/

27. Haxenode Example (node)
Node.js:
var http = require('http');
var server = http.createServer(
function (req, res) {
res.writeHead(200, {'Content-Type': 'text/plain'});
res.end('Hello Worldn');
}
);
server.listen(1337, "127.0.0.1");
console.log('Server running at http://127.0.0.1:1337/');

28. Haxenode Example (haxe)
import js.Node;
class Haxenode {
public static function main() {
var server = Node.http.createServer(function(req:NodeHttpServerReq, res:
NodeHttpServerResp) {
res.setHeader("Content-Type","text/plain");
res.writeHead(200);
res.end('Hello Worldn');
}
);
server.listen(1337,"localhost");
trace('Server running at http://127.0.0.1:1337/');
}
}

29. And last but not least, Games!
Libraries:
Frameworks: HaxeFlixel, awe6, HaxePunk

30. A close look at HaxePunk

31. More information
haxe.org
openfl.org
haxepunk.com

32. Thank you very much !