Architecting PHP applications for Flash at Adobe MAX

This marks the Friday prior to the start of the Adobe MAX conference.  I was asked to speak on the topic of integrating Flash and PHP and I will be.

If you are a Flash/Flex developer and want to look at how you can make remote data accessible to your front-end GUI in an easy manner, I will be showing that.  And I will be showing it on how to do it rightly.  Often front end developers are very good about working in the front end world, but the back end world is quite a different world to work in.  But while it is different, it does not have to be overly complicated.  Often the complexity comes from choosing a mechanism that is complex. With PHP you can choose a mechanism that is not complex.  In fact, by using some of the framework tools, in particular, Zend Framework, you can build out a service layer with relative ease.

There are other topics at Adobe MAX that cover remoting and PHP, which you should probably attend.  However, this session will be done from the point of view of a PHP developer, and a damn fine one, in my humble opinion :-).  We will talk about what you need to do on the Flash side, but we will spend more time on understanding how to build a PHP-based backend.

It's kind of like what Ryan Stewart doing is ActionScript presentation at Zendcon.  Zendcon will have in a attendance some of the best PHP programmers in the world, and some of them want to learn Flex because it gives them a very interesting front end to build services for.  Likewise, Adobe MAX will have a lot of really good frontend developers who may want to provide access to remote data.  But implementing a service layer is something that you don't do simply by hacking together some PHP code.  You can, but you shouldn't.  If you want to know how to architect the PHP side of the equation, this is the talk you need to attend.

We will talk about the components in Zend Framework that you can use to build out your application, how to configure your applications, how to build and unit test your service layer (this is extremely important!) and then finally how to build your service layer to talk with Flash.

Oh, and also, the application we will build will be a random giveaway selector.  We will finish the session by using the application to select a winner for the copy of Zend Studio I will be giving away!