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. […]

Unit testing is becoming a fairly common element of software projects because of its promise of providing better quality to the code base. A unit test is a class or method that exercises your code for purposes of verifying that it functions correctly. During the course of your project, these tests remain as artifacts that can be used over and over again to verify that your code is always working correctly. The higher percentage of your production code you exercise, the higher degree of certainty you can have that your code is doing what it was designed to do. […]

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:

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.

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.

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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 […]

It would be a fair statement to say that I have not paid attention to Flash for several years. Obviously I know that those awesome interfaces for movie web sites are made in flash, as are those annoying video ads that start screaming at you as soon as you load up a page, competing with Megadeth on Rhapsody, cranked out on the 700 watts of power I have in my office. But the last time I really looked seriously at Flash was almost a decade ago and I was thrilled at tweening widgets from one place to another. Unfortunately, there's not really any benefit to tweening a text box. Cool? Yes. Practical? No. So I never really picked it up. Plus I was cheap. That is the reason why I had not really been paying attention to Flash for the past several years. I generally don't look into something if it's cool. I look into something if it is practical. Flash, generally, is meant to be, well, flashy. And it is. But for someone such as myself, I didn't think I had much of a reason to pay attention. Until now... […]

With Adobe’s latest incarnation of the Flex Framework and the Flash Builder integrated development environment (IDE), creating truly engaging front-end clients is now more streamlined. Some of the useful tools and features covered in this article are the Data/Services, Test Operation, and Network Monitor additions to Flash Builder. In this article, I explain how to set up a simple Representational State Transfer (REST) service using the Zend Framework 1.9 locally and connect to it in the Flex 4 application. […]

What technology will you be using for developing your next Rich Internet Application? Tasked with building a software flight recorder for Zend Server 5.0 (the new release of its popular PHP web application server), Zend chose Adobe Flex. Join this webinar by Adobe and Zend to learn what made The PHP Company opt for Flex, see a live demo, and hear lessons learned from one PHP/Flex development project. You’ll find out how Flex and PHP can be used together to enhance your application. […]

Mihai Corlan, one of Adobe’s platform evangelists, has written a rather exhaustive introduction to programming in Flex, specifically for current PHP developers. […]

The best applications for the rich Internet connect to the server to both read and write data. So, the easier it is to get data from the server and send data back to it, the quicker you can develop some awesome applications. Reading and posting to Extensible Markup Language (XML)-based services with Adobe Flex is easy. But what's even easier is using Adobe's Action Message Format (AMF) to send messages between the Flex client and the server. It's as easy to use as a method call on an object. This article written by Jack Herrington shows how to set up an AMF service on your PHP web server using the Zend Framework and Zend_Amf. […]