I have uploaded the slides from my keynote presentation at the DC PHP Conference if you're interested in them. The files for the hands on Flex and PHP session that I did later in the day are also available online.

At Adobe MAX in Barcelona I gave 3 sessions on Flex and PHP. As part of the presentation I created a number of small samples that show how to use Flex and PHP together. Follow the instructions in the ReadMe.pdf file in the .zip file to set things up, and then check out the projects in the Flex/ folder for a number of samples that show the two technologies working together. There are examples that show how to read and write data using XML, JSON and WebORB. These are not complicated examples - they are designed to be very simple and show you at a basic level how to connect Flex and PHP together.

Charlie Key, who helps run a great blog at Paranoid Ferret with some excellent tutorials, has published an article on the Flex developer center about transferring information from Flex to PHP using JSON. A worthwhile read if you're interested in building RIAs with Flex and PHP on the backend.

Scrybe, the most anticipated beta software has started inviting people to join their site. I received an email early this morning with the message "Thank you for offering to help with our beta program!
We really appreciate your help in making Scrybe a great product. In order to make this beta program effective, we have compiled a few guidelines for all our beta testers that are available on our FAQ page. Please review these guidelines before you start testing the product. To accept this invitation and register for your account, visit..."

Scrybe is an online organizer, mostly centered around an online calendar that works really nicely. The following demo video gives you an idea of how Scrybe works. Hopefully this means that they'll be opening up their site soon.

There are a number of hands on sessions that are coming up in the next few weeks that deal with Flex and PHP together. Head to any of the following conferences to get more information, and hands on training, about building Flex applications powered by PHP.

First off, I'll be doing a session on Flex and PHP at the PHP Works Conference in Atlanta, on September 12th, from 9:00 AM to 12:00 Noon. If you're attending the conference, or live in the area, and want to get a hands on intro to Flex and PHP, you'll want to register soon.

Next up, Renaun Erickson will be doing hands on sessions about Flex and PHP at Adobe MAX North America. I've signed up to be an assistant at those sessions, so you'll have a lot of Flex and PHP experience at those sessions.

Finally, I'm doing a set of hands on sessions at Adobe MAX Europe. The sessions run from the 15th to the 17th in Barcelona, Spain. If you're in Europe and want hands on training for PHP and Flex, that's your best option. If you can't make it there, I'll be speaking at the Flex London User Group with James Ward on October 10th, and at a PHP event in Paris on the 11th of October.

There's >another great tutorial posted over at paranoidferret.com by Charlie Key. This one deals with sending and receiving data from a MySQL database using JSON to transfer the data.

O'Reilly has a new article up, published by Jack Herrington, that discusses Flex and PHP. This is a great introduction to PHP and Flex. Jack has also written an article on OnLamp about building a YouTube clone using Flex and PHP.
[Via Ryan Stewart and PHPDeveloper.org]

I have uploaded the slides and sample files from this week's Flex and PHP e-seminar. The sample files require WebORB to be installed into the /weborb directory on your machine. You'll need to get the latest version of a href="http://www.themidnightcoders.com/weborb/php/">WebORB for PHP from their site. If you have any questions about the samples, please join the PHP / Flex mailing list on Google Groups. There are a ton of great links for PHP developers interested in Flex at flex.org/php.

Someone (I wish people would put their names on blog posts or at least an about page on their blog) has posted a good tutorial on using Flex and PHP together, transferring data using JSON.

In my talk a few days ago, I was asked about the various methods of getting data from PHP to Flex (and vice versa). The options are essentially XML (sometimes called REST), JSON and AMF. XML is the easiest, but also the slowest. If you aren't sending lots of data, you can use that very easily. JSON is fairly easy on the PHP side (its built into PHP 5.2), but requires an open source library called corelib for Flex.

AMF is the fastest solution, but also the most complicated to get started. There are a few options, but the leading candidate right now is WebORB for PHP from the Midnight Coders. Lots of people are using AMFPHP, but the leader of that project recently retired. WebORB for PHP was recently updated to version 2.0, with a ton of improvements in it.

What do you think? Do you agree with my assessment? What are you using in your PHP / Flex application?

The Midnight Coders updated their release of WebORB for PHP last week. This new release, v. 2.0, adds a number of awesome features for PHP developers. There's a Flex based console that includes a service browser, as well as a number of useful examples, showing both the client side code (in Flex) and server side code in PHP. The getting started guide (again, built into the console or available on the web) provides a good tutorial for creating your first WebORB powered application.

However, one of the things that I don't like about the existing documentation is that it prompts you to use Flex Data Services when starting up a new project. I spoke to Mark Piller from Midnight Coders last week, and it turns out you don't need to do that. You can start up a new Flex project, and just like with AMFPHP you can create a services-config.xml file that you can put into the root of your project. I've created a sample services-config.xml file for WebORB. Put this in the root of your Flex project, modify the URL of the endpoint URI to point to your installation of Weborb, and add the line -services "services-config.xml" to the Flex compiler. To me this is much easier than the documented method, although more experienced Flex developers may disagree.

If you're building Flex based PHP solutions, check out WebORB for PHP. Now that Patrick Mineault has retired from the AMFPHP project, this appears to be the best solution for PHP developers looking to get started with Flex.