David's Weblog

Here is a link to my design document.  There will likely be revisions to this document as the project continues.

A couple of weeks ago, I gave a presentation for my CS 658 class at Grand Valley.  I wrote an accompanying short paper that gives a general overview of Adobe Flex.  The paper and presentation describe what Flex is, but more importantly, what it is not.

This could be considered a task list:

• Select a communication protocol to be used by the client/server
• Way to create objects on screen that can be re-used, and tied to objects on the server
• Way to exchange PHP objects with Flex application objects
• Security – needed for saving customer/subscriber information, also for adding site content using basic forms

Decisions to make:

• Select a language.  I would like to use PHP because it is the only language supported in the Linux hosting plan by my web host, GoDaddy (ASP is another option, but that requires Windows hosting).  I also have some PHP classes developed and could re-use them.  
• I would like to be able to prototype using AMF because it allows PHP objects to be exchanged with ActionScript objects.   JSON is another option for exhanging objects.
• Zend Framework v1.7 has PHP support for AMF.  It is Open Source.

Other:

• The Zend Framework download is here:  http://www.zend.com/en/community/downloads?fle=Adobe   Adobe Flex PHP documentation is here: http://learn.adobe.com/wiki/display/Flex/Flex+and+PHP
• Zend Studio will let me program/debug PHP in Eclipse, but it only has a 30 day trial.   Not required, but I would like to try it.