Collaborative Mapping using Cocomo

In this post I'm demonstrating how to use Cocomo's data messaging to enable collaborative mapping. One or more map application can share their active extent and whiteboard using the mouse. Though the application is not very sophisticated, it demonstrates the extensibility of the flex api and the power of Cocomo. BTW, I highly recommend that you read Ryan's blog post on how to get started with Cocomo. Using the CocomoDevConsole, I created a CollectionNode and named it 'cocomoMap', and I added two non-persistant Nodes. The application uses the node 'cocomoMapExtent' to publish and receive active map extents, and the node 'cocomoMapPoints' is used to publish and receive drawn polylines. One of the cool things that I like in Cocomo, is that you can register a class with the MessageItem registry to enable the publishing and receiving of message bodies in 'native' format. So, I registered the class SpatialReference, MapPoint, Polyline and Extent in such a way that I can directly publish extents and polylines without having to come up with my own serializing/de-serialization scheme. Like usual, you can download the source code from here, and make sure to compile the application with the following switches '-keep-as3-metadata+=Inject -keep-as3-metadata+=Listen'. The later is a post for another day.