flash on the beach ‘07 – aral balkan on swx

I had been looking forward to hearing Aral Balkan talk this year at flash on the beach, not only because he’s an entertaining and interesting speaker but also because I’d been wanting to play with swx for a while. Watching him demo it in person was a good impetus to get my own experiments going.

Aral promised to talk about swx, baby! And that he did. After an intro on why we all need swx so badly (probably preaching to the saved for most of us), and a couple of bumps due to network trouble, Aral still managed to get a very quick demo going that showed how simple it can be to access data with swx. His impromptu 20 minute demo on the next day was even more impressive (no network probs helps!). Maybe the bunny sabotaged him.

If you’re on a mac, he’s made a nice SWX PHP MAMP bundle available (Mac, Apache, MySQL, PHP), so you can test on your apache web server using MAMP, an easy to launch application that controls the Apache and MySQL servers.

MAMP was new to me, as I usually just run the built-in apache server on Mac by starting it via Terminal or even with the Sharing Preferences Panel. Using MAMP is tons easier, just launch the app and it will start both servers and open up a start page of your choice. Nice. Already a free goodie, cool.

That’s where I ran into a little glitch with the MAMP SWX bundle, though. Aral has made some nice screencasts for using swx, in which you see the MAMP set up opening directly to the SWX welcome page. When I started MAMP, however, it opened up it’s own default page (the generic welcome to MAMP page).

To get the SWX start page to open up when launching MAMP I needed only to change one of its Preferences: on the Start/Stop preferences panel, I changed the Start page url from “/MAMP/index.php” to just “/” (no quotes).

I wonder if that’s a necessary step, or if there’s a preconfiguration of the SWX MAMP bundle that’s off just a little? Or maybe it’s me that’s off just a little.

Anyway, now that it’s up and running I’m really looking forward to playing with it. This could make life a lot simpler for an application that uses AMFPHP remoting right now, but broke when we had to move it from one server to another…

Great stuff, thank you Aral!

PHP MVC Frameworks

Got this info on PHP frameworks from Rolf, putting it here for quick access…

Symfony: http://www.symfony-project.com/
Très avancé, beaucoup de fonctionallités, approche similaire
comme RoR (Ruby on Rails). Purement PHP5 avec approche orienté
object conséquente.

CakePHP: http://www.cakephp.org/
Très simple a apprendre et permet quand-même des applications
avancés, projet très actif

Chouette: Les deux frameworks ont du support pour Ajax!

Une liste plus complète avec commentaires:
http://www.mustap.com/phpzone_post_73_top-10-php-mvc-frameworks

Tutorial: Using Flex 2 with PHP

Thought Flex was just for Java applications? Think again, and check out Adobe Labs’ tutorial on using Flex 2 with PHP.

In a nutshell, a Flex application is mxml markup for the user interface, combined with ActionScript for the interaction logic, all compiled into the swf format.

In the tutorial, you access data from a database using PHP, then use PHP to write it out in XML. From your mxml you simply reference the PHP-generated XML as the data source, or in mxml-ese, the “HTTPService”. The mxml builds your interface using Flex components, all a quite familiar looking Flash-like user interface.

If you’ve stayed away from Flex because you’re not into Java, this well done introduction for PHP fans may convince you otherwise.

tutorial on flex 2 and php

flex amounts to compiling mxml to a swf. Data sources are in xml, so if you’re using a db and php you have to translate your db results into xml. Without php and a db you can access static xml files.

Here’s a tutorial on using flex 2 with php:

Flex Framework:tutorials:flex2 and php – Adobe Labs

EasyPHP to install and use Apache, MySQL, PHP on Windows

Just checked out: EasyPHP.org. (EasyPHP install guide has more instructions in English.)

This is indeed an excellent tool, delivering an apache, mysql, phpmyadmin installation that really is click and play.

When easyPHP is launched, its icon in the system tray blinks to let you know that the apache and mysql servers are running. A right click on the icon gives you quick access to log and config files, the localhost, an administration interface, stopping or restarting the servers, among others. From the admin interface you can go to phpmyadmin and start building your databases.

Special Bonus: because easyPHP is installed entirely in one location, you can install it on a USB stick too (not yet tested).

One downside, depending on your perspective: all the help pages and documentation seem to be in French, in spite of the fact that the language chosen at installation was English. Once it’s all installed, though, it’s easy enough to use that you probably won’t need to consult the docs very much. Excellent software (for free!).

PHP, XML and MS Excel Files

Need to check these out:

from webmonkey ash
http://evoluted.net/archives/2005/06/reading_and_wri.php?d=b

from phpclasses.org
http://www.phpclasses.org/browse/package/1919.html

from sitepoint
http://www.sitepoint.com/article/pear-spreadsheet_excel_writer

from ibm
http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/library/os-phpexcel/
convert xml to excel:
http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/library/x-tipexc.html

xml and php

http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/os-xmldomphp/

editing xml with php
http://www.codecomments.com/archive227-2005-5-506452.html

xml parser for php, no DTD needed!
http://minixml.psychogenic.com/

Cheat Sheets mysql, php, css

Thanks to le blog de David

Cheat Sheets