PHP is a great back-end for a lot of projects. However, these days, many projects aren’t using just HTML for their client side. Many projects are turning to Flex, Adobe’s Open Source framework built on top of ActionScript to build desk-top applications that talk to their PHP back-end systems. If you are using Flex to build AIR based desktop apps or browser based Flash apps, you probably want ot check out Adobe’s MAX conference. Click on in and I’ll give you links and pictures.

Ryan Stewart and Kevin Schroeder (two all around great guys) have written an article on using Flex and Zend Framework to build the front end and back end of an application respectively. Click on it, let’s talk about this for a bit.

One of the reasons I love PHP is that all I have to deal with is back-end code. I am absolutely horrible at anything resembling design, this includes information design. Recently Ryan Stewart wrote a quick blog post showing how to use Flex and PHP to build charts in your applications. Click on in and I’ll dig up the link for you.

From Mihai Corlan’s blog:

bq. As your projects grow in size and more people get involved you’ll find yourself fixing more and more bugs. When this happens, one of the best friends a developer has is the debugger. In this paper, I’ll talk about some of the workflows and tools you can use to debug Flex and PHP projects.

bq. If you want to try the steps outlined here for yourself, you’ll need Flash Builder 4, a PHP and MySQL server (MAMP or WAMP will do just fine), Eclipse PDT, and XDebug.

May 10 – 14 2010. Free, online sessions for PHP developers interested in learning about the Adobe Flash Platform, including: What’s New in Flash Builder 4 for PHP Developers; Using Advanced Features with Flex & PHP; and A Basic CRUD Application with Zend_AMF and Flex 4

Rich Internet applications built with Adobe Flex and Flash Builder have been steadily gaining a foothold in enterprise development for quite some time. As the platform has grown and evolved, PHP has also made amazing progress toward becoming a mature, powerful object-oriented language with rapid adoption and dozens of frameworks and design pattern implementations. As PHP continues to prosper, developers are able to borrow more and more of the things Java has got right, taking one check after another from the “Java-only” column. One outstanding example of this is object-relational mapping (ORM). A few different PHP ORM implementations are available, and all of them have positive attributes. However, after some experimentation, I’ve found that Doctrine is my favorite.

The recent release of Adobe Flash Builder 4 Beta (formerly Adobe Flex Builder) includes an impressive lineup of features aimed at enterprise PHP development, in large part because of a partnership with Zend & Zend Framework. This tutorial will describe how to use the new data-centric features of Flash Builder for PHP development.

As of version 1.7, Zend Framework includes an extension for native Adobe Action Message Format (AMF) communication between Adobe Flash Platform applications and PHP. The Zend Framework includes extensions for a vast array of common programming tasks, including database connectivity and abstraction, e-mail, authentication, and third-party application programming interface (API) access. Most of these are useful in Flex applications, and with Zend_Amf, leveraging them has never been easier. In this article, you create a Flex application that takes advantage of some useful Zend Framework extensions.

The new year has just started, and to start off well the dutch PHP usergroup (phpGG) is organizing a frontend-oriented event. This event is intended for developers who get in touch with client-side technology. Not just PHP developers, also frontend developers, and everyone who has to deal with frontend stuff in some way. Whether you deal with frontends on a daily basis, or are curious to the possibilities of making a new application more attractive in a graphical sense, you can’t miss out on this day. Besides all this, it’s also an excellent opportunity to get a (free!) membership of phpGG!

It’s the holidays, so what better time to kick back and start learning about PHP and Flex? And to get you started, here’s a recent article by Richard Bates that demonstrates just how easy it is to create PHP/Flex applications using the integrated features of Zend Studio for Eclipse and the Flex Builder 3 Eclipse Plug-in.