Flex, Adobe AIR, and PHP: the beginning of a beautiful friendship

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Copyright 2009 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved. 1

Flex, Adobe AIR, and PHP: the beginning of a beautiful friendship

Mihai Corlan Platform Evangelist, Adobe

PHP GeekMeet 2009, Cluj

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About me

•  Platform Evangelist, member of the Adobe’s European team

•  Used to be a Flex Builder engineer (Java Desktop SWT, Eclipse

Platform)

•  Used to be a web developer (PHP, ColdFusion, DHTML, JS, MySQL,

Sybase…)

•  ~9 years experience with web related technologies

•  I write articles, I do presentations, and I code

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Today’s Agenda

•  What is RIA and why RIA is a good thing

•  What is Flex

•  What is Adobe AIR

•  Why AIR applications?

•  Flex/AIR and PHP

•  Q & A

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What matters?

Experience Matters!

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What matters?

USER Experience Matters!

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A shoe story…

More than 2.000 years experience in producing shoes.

We can produce them really cheap.

20 Euro a pair, maybe?

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A shoe story…

More than 2.000 years experience in producing shoes.

We can produce them really cheap.

20 Euro a pair, maybe?

Wrong! Because of better user experience, people women are willing to pay 100+ euro!

Better design, limited edition = better user experience = greater value

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What is RIA?

MAINFRAME

RE

AC

H

Local

Global

RICH Text UI Integrated media GUI

CLIENT/SERVER

WEB APPLICATIONS

2004

1992

1998

RICH INTERNET APPLICATIONS

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Demos time!

Let’s see what it can be done with the Flash Platform!

Flash Player

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What is Flex?

  Flex is just another way to create a Flash application

Flash Player

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What is Flex?

  Flex SDK   2 languages

  MXML   ActionScript 3

  Compilers   Rich Component Library   Debuggers

Flex SDK

Flex Class Library

MXML ActionScript

Debuggers

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What is Flex?




  Flex Builder IDE   Eclipse Plug-in or turn-key install

  Accelerates Design and Development

  Design view and code view

Flex Builder IDE

Flex SDK

Flex Class Library

MXML ActionScript

Debuggers

Flash Player

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What is Flex?




  Flex Builder IDE   Eclipse Plug-in or turn-key install

  Accelerates Design and Development

  Design view and code view

Flex Builder IDE

Flex SDK

Flex Class Library

MXML ActionScript

Debuggers

Compile

Browser

Flash Player

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What is AIR?

Adobe® AIR™ lets developers use their existing web development skills in HTML,

AJAX, Flash and Flex to build and deploy rich Internet applications to the desktop

on Windows, Mac or Linux.

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Adobe AIR Application Stack

Cross-OS Application

Integrated Rendering

Integrated DOMs & Scripting

Flash

Flex ActionScript XML Audio Video

HTML

PDF

HTML

HTML JavaScript XML CSS

Flash

PDF

Adobe AIR APIs

Mac, Windows, Linux & Device OS

File System Access

Network Detection Notifications Application

Update Drag and Drop

Local Database ...

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RIAs can be limited by the browser

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#1 – No offline access

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#2 – Constrained within the browser chrome

Browser chrome & application chrome con"ict

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#3 – Common desktop interactions not possible

Drag & drop not possible

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#4 – Local system access limited

File interaction restricted by browser sandbox

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#5 – Updates only delivered when browser is open

Alerts only visible when browser open

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Why RIAs on the desktop

Persistent connection

Desktop functionality Data access Efficient development

Branded experiences

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AIR capabilities

•  Native window types (normal, utility, lightweight)

•  Support for multiple monitors

•  Native Menu support (App, window, dock, system tray, context)

•  Full access to the local #le system (read/create/delete)

•  Encrypted Local Storage

•  Local SQLite databases, including encrypted

•  Drag and Drop

•  Clipboard (read/write)

•  Network activity monitor

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Communication between Flex and PHP server

“I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship!”

Flex & AIR on the client, PHP on the server.

Web browser FLEX Apps

Desktop AIR Apps

Server PHP

REST Services

Web Services

Remoting

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Are there any Flex/AIR apps with PHP out there?

AIR & Flex apps with PHP backend:

http://corlan.org/"exair-and-php-apps/

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What tools to use?

For Flex and PHP and Eclipse based solution:

•  Flex Builder + PDT

•  Flex Builder + Zend Studio

Advantages:

•  You can create combined Flex and PHP or AIR and PHP projects

•  That helps you with deploying, and debugging

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Debugging

Debugging Flex applications:

1.  Use a log function on the server, and save the var_dump of the PHP

variables in a "at #le

2.  Use Charles proxy sniffer, you can inspect the traffic between client

and server

3.  Use Flex Builder and Zend Studio debuggers

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How does remoting work?

MyClass {

getData() { … } saveData($myVO) {…}

}

Flex/AIR Client PHP Server AMF3

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RemoteObject

getData(); saveData(myVO);

MyClass {


}

Client calls MyClass->getData()

Flex/AIR Client PHP Server AMF3

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RemoteObject


MyClass {


}


Flex/AIR Client PHP Server

MyVO {

public $id; public $name;

}

MyVO {

public var id:int; public var name:String;

}

Automatic conversion between PHP and ActionScript class

AMF3

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RemoteObject


MyClass {


}


Flex/AIR Client PHP Server

MyVO {

public $id; public $name;

}

MyVO {

public var id:int; public var name:String;

}

Server sends an array of MyVO objects

Automatic conversion between PHP and ActionScript class

Client calls RemoteObject.saveData(myVO) MyClass->saveData($myVO)

AMF3

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REST vs. AMF?

http://www.jamesward.com/census/

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PHP and AMF

There are four libraries for doing remoting with PHP classes:

1.  Zend AMF – part of the Zend Framework

2.  AMFPHP

3.  WebORB for PHP (remoting and data messaging – publisher/subscriber)

4.  SabreAMF

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Thank you!

Download Flex Builder: http://www.adobe.com/go/flex_trial AIR: http://www.adobe.com/go/air AIR Adobe Developer Center: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/air/ Download Tour de Flex: http://flex.org/tour Learn Flex in one week: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flex/videotraining/

Mihai Corlan

Blog: http://corlan.org

E-mail: [email protected]

Flex, Adobe AIR, and PHP: the beginning of a beautiful friendship

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