Great webinar on using ZendAMF with Flash Builder 4
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Ok when I say great I may be a little biased because I’m the one who presented it, but nonetheless I think it came out great. The main reason for this is that all of the demos and features worked smoothly without any hiccups. In this one hour session I cover the basics of using the new data features in Flash Builder 4 to install and utilize the ZendAMF library for PHP. The examples show how easy it is now to retrieve and display database content without writing even a single line of code. Go on over and watch it and let me know what you thought of it. |
Lee
Great AMF benchmarking tool
I just finished the final webinar in my 3-part series on PHP and the Flash Platform. You can watch parts one and two and today’s recording should be available soon. Today I showcased a great tool that was created by fellow evangelist James Ward which lets you see the performance gains when using AMF and Flex over things like AJAX and regular XML integration.
I have known about this tool for a while but I wanted to make sure that the rest of the Flash community was aware of it. Your really see the performance gains of AMF when you are dealing with large data sets. For instance, you can load and display 20,000 rows of data using AMF in half the time that it takes to do 5,000 rows with standard XML. Wow!
Lee
New video tutorial on using ZendAMF
I just finished uploading a new tutorial that shows you the basics of using the new ZendAMF framework. As you’ll see, the workflow is almost identical to the workflow for AMFPHP so it shouldn’t take long to make the switch. In this example I show how to retrieve database content and read it into Flash using the NetConnection class. Check it out at http://www.gotoandlearn.com.
Lee
An overview of ZendAMF
This week I attended the Zend/PHP Conference where we officially announced the addition of AMF into the Zend Framework. I thought it would helpful to give an overview of what this means to Flash developers, especially those who are not familiar with Zend.
What is Zend?
Zend is a company that develops a wide array of solutions for PHP developers. They make Zend Studio, which is an Eclipse-based IDE for doing PHP development. We also announced that we are working with Zend so developers will be able to install the Flex 3 Eclipse plug-in into Zend Studio for tight integration. The Zend Framework is a combination of an MVC framework in addition to a wide variety of utilities for doing everything from connecting to Flickr to database interaction. I just started using the Zend MVC framework for gotoAndLearn and so far I like it a lot. There is a little bit of a learning curve if you are not completely familiar with MVC concepts.
What is ZendAMF?
ZendAMF is essentially the addition of AMF support into the Zend Framework. You do not have to use the MVC framework to use the new AMF features. The workflow is very similar to the one used in AMFPHP. This is no accident, as both implementations are being done by Wade Arnold. Essentially you create a PHP class with methods that can be called directly from Flash or Flex. Take a look at my tutorials on AMFPHP for more on how to do this. I’ll let you know when the first stable release of ZendAMF hits the streets. It should only be a matter of days now.
So what about AMFPHP?
Wade will continue to run this project but using ZendAMF will be the only method that will be officially supported by both Adobe and Zend. This means that it will be thoroughly tested and potentially more reliable than AMFPHP. Again, the difficulty level of working with either is about the same. Look for a tutorial on ZendAMF very soon.
Lee
Video of me integrating PHP and Flex
About month ago I went up to the city to record some video demos for the Adobe site. These are more polished than the ones I do at gotoAndLearn() and are even shot against a green screen. In this video I show how to integrate PHP and Flex together using XML. It’s not often that I do stuff in Flex but I do open it from time to time.
Lee
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