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Flash Remoting allows flash movies to call remote server side applications, passing parameters and recieving requests, without knowledge of the server side. The calls are usually named Remote Procedural Calls (RPCs), and transfer serialized, type-persistent objects directly between the server and a Flash MX client. Developers on both sides (flash and server) collaberate on ways of calling methods in order to build the system. With AMF (Action Message Format) the exchange of information is faster and allows you to pass objects (not only name/value pairs) between Flash and the server in binary format. This allows you to easily develop complex applications that rely on an efficient way of sending and recieving data.
Flash Remoting was first available as a native ColdFusion feature, then extended to .Net and J2EE Application Servers. But recently one of the Forum Administrators here in Flash-db (Wolfgang aka Musicman) exposed the binary format of the AMF packet. This opened the door for the AMFPHP Project, where developers have been building an open source library to port Flash Remoting to PHP. This project will allow Flash developers to use Flash remoting in a PHP environment, and with (almost) the same functionality as Macromedia's version. Other developers have also begun to port flash remoting to other languages such as Java (see http://www.openamf.org/) and Perl (see http://www.simonf.com/flap/)
You can follow also an interesting discussion about Flash Remoting here
Visit the amfphp flash remoting message board for up to date (amfphp is still in development) and helpful tips (amfphp can either be really easy or really hard to setup and use the first time). The latest version (1.2 as this writing) can be downloaded from amfphp site.
Requirements
To run this example you need
- A web server running with php support (or ColdFusion server if you want to check ColdFusion example)
- Amfphp. You can download from http://www.amfphp.org
- Remoting AS2 classes from http://www.macromedia.com/software/flashremoting/downloads/components/.
If you want to use Java, check HelloWorld with Openamf tutorial. Here's our working example and the source files:
