Building an online store using Flash and AMFPHP

Remoting trough amfphp

As exposed in intro, amfphp is an open source implementation of Flash Remoting that allow developers to call remote procedures in the server. We will use amfphp to implement the management of the database, and also to send the feedback mail. But first of all we will go to the process of installing amfphp.

First of all, I assume you have PHP and MySQL installed and running in your environment. If not, you can take a look at this packages in order to install both plus Apache Web Server on Windows/Linux environments or follow this instructions to install over Mac. Instructions on how install this services are beyond the scope of this tutorial.

In order to work and debug Flash Remoting Services, we need also to install the Flash Remoting Components for Flash MX, a free set of components (really a library) that brings support to build remote objects, NetConnections and key debug info. Follow the instructions in Macromedia page to install the extension.

Last of all, download the the amfphp source from http://amfphp.sourceforge.net/. There's a zip version, but if you have some background and knowledge, could use the CVS repository to download latest files from there. Currently version is 0.5.1, but I expect to update this page following closer new versions and adds.

The first thing is to locate the web folder, under web files would be published. Usually in a Windows environment is under C:\Apache\htdocs folder using Apache or C:\Inetpub\wwwroot using IIS. Here we will publish all our files. Now the Flash Remoting Services (aka amfphp) is a structure of folders and files that we need to put there and access anytime we need to consume Flash remoting services. Inside the package there's only one needed folder named flashservices. You can also copy the examples folder to play around it and follow our explanation, but is not really needed for the final application.

Now you have a flashservices folder in your root path. We will use the Gateway.php file to build our own. All the files we open now should run trough the our local server, usually in localhost. So to test that we have no problems with our gateway, open your browser with the URL http://localhost/flashservices/app/Gateway.php . If you see nothing, that's good, since we need to instantiate our own service to use it. If you have problems installing the package, please post your questions in the amfphp board here in Flash-db.

The complete amfphp library has many files linked together using include statements, so you don't need to take care about missing files if you keep the folder structure. If you don't know how Flash Remoting works, perhaps you want to take a look at this little tutorial. If you have the basis, then we will check that the service is running.