CakePHP + AMFPHP + Flex = some crazy great stuff?

Filed under Flash, Flex, PHP by Chad | 8 comments

I can only imagine. At work we have a really nice CakePHP app built to generate XML and someother nice stuff for some offline Flash apps we use. It works great. The front end for the Cake app is HTML/AJAX and it’s nice, but works pretty poorly in IE6. Since some of our clients are on IE6, and probably will be until their IT staff gets a good virus or worm scare that makes them realize it’s probably time to move to IE7… it’s probably in our best interest to have an app that works well in the IE6 mess. I’m not against AJAX… I’m not really pro Flex. But the fact that the UI will look and behave the same in any browser with Flash 9 is pretty darn awesome IMHO. CakePHP has some AMFPHP support, just wondering if anyone has built some tutorials or examples out there using the three of them together… Flex, AMFPHP and Cake, that is… I’d like to get an idea of how to go about this before I jump.

I figure, if I’m going niche, I’m going niche. There’s probably like a couple hundred people out there speaking that kind of acronym soup, so I apologize to my family that checks on my blog from time to time. Please, check out the photo links on the right hand sidebar and forget the geek speak.

Posted on March 6, 2007

8 comments

1. Renaun Erickson Mar 7

   If you already have your views spitting out XML, it will probably be easier to just use HTTPService in Flex.

2. Filippo Gregoretti Mar 7

   Ciao,
   we developed a huge RIA with CakePHP and AMFPHP, and they do work smoothly together… reliable and quick.
   Not Flex still, but Flash 8. Check it out: http://www.onsitedirectglobal.com
   namaste
   Filippo

3. David Knape Mar 10

   Chad, I just found your blog accidentally while trying to find others mixing cakephp and flex. I’ve done a number of custom content mangement tools in cakePHP in the last couple months, and I’m starting to migrate over to Flex. However, I’ve found that relaying on the Model classes to get all your data can lead to a lot of unnecessary overhead. In the long run, you might be better off just creating slim AMFPHP services that don’t rely on the cake classes.

4. Chad Mar 10

   Dave,
   Good to have you stop by… I feel you’re right about the services related architecture, rather than a sledgehammer approach by shoehorning flex into the views, etc.

   Hope you are doing well out there. It looks like you must be busy judging by your site. If you ever make it back to Peoria, look me up, I’d like to catch up with you.

   I’m doing some work with Steve Merrill these days. Funny how things work, isn’t it?

5. Tom Mar 30

   I’ve written a little “tutorial” which is more like some notes on how to get CakePHP working with Flex. There are a few important things to take note on. There is a big problem when using Flex’s DataGrid and data you pull from your cake app with AMFPHP. The arrays CakePHP likes to generate and use (which are very nice and organized by the way) are too complex for Flex’s DataGrid. My notes explain this and highlight how to populate a DataGrid in Flex from your cake app…basically you’ll end up with a default looking index cake view page, but in Flex. http://www.concepthue.com/how-to/cake_flex/

6. Michelle Dec 7

   Thanks for the links

   regards,
   M

7. Chad Apr 29

   just to let people know who still come across this post… yeah, we have done a bit more work on this bridge at Iona, but most all of our PHP work these days goes through Drupal and relies on the services module… not as much Cake anymore. Not to say there’s anything worng with Cake, it’s just that we like the Drupal a bit more.

8. Daniel Verner Apr 3

   I created a plugin for cakePHP. The plugin integrates the lastest AMFPHP into the cakePHP framework. You can check my article here: http://carrotplant.com/en/blog/flex-remoting-with-cakephp-cpamf-plugin
   And tutorials for using the plugin:
   http://carrotplant.com/en/blog/cpamf-flex-example
   http://carrotplant.com/en/blog/cpamf-php-example

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