A new chapter: Patrick Mineault joins SWX
What a crazy week this has been! First, I released a new data exchange format for Flash called SWX. It was generally very enthusiastically received but Patrick Mineault was not impressed. Just when I'd thought that we'd mostly agreed to disagree on the matter, I got an email this morning from Patrick that put a smile on my face. Apparently, on further thought, Patrick's decided that SWX is a good idea after all and suggested that we merge it with Amfphp.
So, it's my great pleasure to announce Swxamfphp, pronounced Swix-Amph-H(i)p.
Our initial thoughts are to send SWFs to the Remoting gateway and see how that works out. Based on the results of those feasibility studies, we're considering embedding Remoting calls inside SWX SWF files and sending them to the Amfphp JSON endpoint over UDP before moving on to remoting entire movie clips. There's just so much potential here -- I can't explain how exciting this is.
I've also seen some amazing feedback on SWX from the web and wanted to share some of my favorites with you:
Mike Downey: "This is such an exciting time for the Flash Platform. I just know that Apollo is going to change everything."
Mike Chambers: "I have seen the future. And this is it. I'm definitely going to be using Apollo exclusively from now on."
Guy Watson: "This is great news! Go Apollo!"
Ryan Steward: "If I had two columns, I'd cover this in both. Apollo rocks!
Jesse Warden: "There's pimp-tight an' then dere's bettah, Apollo iz bettah than da bomb. Peep this shit!"
Thanks guys. It's all quite overwhelming! 
The A new chapter: Patrick Mineault joins SWX article by Aral Balkan, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0 UK: England License.
Robin Harrison
Wow, that’s great news - but will it work with Adobe Acrobat Live Cycle Data Services Enterprise on a 64bit VAX system?
:p
April 1st, 2007 at 3:34 pmaral
I’m afraid not. But please feel free to put in a feature request. My personal priority is to implement backwards compatibility support for the IBM Series/370.
April 1st, 2007 at 3:42 pmBrandon Ellis
Hey Aral,
April 1st, 2007 at 3:52 pmThat’s excellent news.
This kind of attitude is what makes our community so strong.
Pete
I was going to leave a long ‘i don’t get Swxamfphp’ comment for a laugh (it *is* April 1st after all) but I can’t be arsed….
Great news Aral and Patrick… Keep going like this and you’ll be ‘acquired’ or something
April 1st, 2007 at 4:06 pmPatrick Mineault
I must have been sleepmailing again
April 1st, 2007 at 4:54 pmTek
I really have fun while reading that !
April 1st, 2007 at 5:45 pmRelly
*giggles*
April 1st, 2007 at 6:18 pmAnd HAF day to you too, Aral
Daryl Teo
What does Apollo got to do with it all? lol I’m lost
April 1st, 2007 at 6:21 pmWilliam from Lagos
Hey Daryl Teo, “April Fool”,….. don’t you get it!
April 1st, 2007 at 7:46 pmMichiel van der Ros
After 10 pages of blog reading I’m happy to hear you are going to try and integrate it with Amfphp.
But you guys *really* need a new name! I mean, 9 letter acronyms are evil and speech-impairing. S.W.X.A.M.F.P.H.P.
April 2nd, 2007 at 9:43 amJust give it a name like Apollo. I opt for Adama
aral
Just so there’s no confusion — this was posted on April 1st — April Fool!
April 2nd, 2007 at 9:59 amaYo
More bounce to the ounce Aral. The fusion of AMFphp and SWX is as you say, just a logical progression
April 2nd, 2007 at 10:51 amaYo
Not!!! Or perhaps……
April 2nd, 2007 at 10:57 amBrendan
Stuff April Fools merge them anyway!
April 2nd, 2007 at 12:31 pmMichiel van der Ros
Okay, I fell for it
I never seem to see the point of these jokes that announce something and then say it’s not true. Unless it’s something too silly to be believed in the first place, like a crate of bacteria being released on a crop field, or a page from a newspaper that will transform into a playable record when dipped in vinegar. (yep!)
Oh well, just wait for the first release of Adama ™ :-p
April 2nd, 2007 at 1:41 pmLEE
Hah! That was mean.
April 3rd, 2007 at 2:46 amDavid GO
Hi Aral,
Im quite surprised of your idea, I had the same idea two or more years ago and did an implementation of it, the idea came to me before amfphp came to reallity and phpobject was usually used.
Then I studied all the ways of doing http requests using proxies but have to tell that amfphp recordset is quite powerful. The page i sent is the actually enterprise i work with. The flash map is obtaining all the submaps by a php proxy using Dime in nusoap (yeahhh i wrote support for DIME attachments in nuSoap) also the interesting point is that the components are all mixed MVC with singletons, and the interface is never disabled when changing the parameters (using a common producer-consumer).
The interesting point here was that as the components are singletons the submaps just call the methods of the other singletons (in fact not singletons but classes with static methods), i saw that calling that methods in the constructor didnt work. have to be a problem with the incarnation of the movieclip and the class itself so the calls have to be done at the first frame of each submap!! maybe is a little bit confusing what im trying to explain and i dindnt realize why have to be done that way, i suppose that it is a flash player bug that first execute the constructor and then paint the movieclip, but the movieclip have to be painted with dynamic data form other singletons!! the areas are only selectable if contains any property.
Anyway i had the same idea as you, i implemented it quite time ago it but i desestimated it.
Good Luck Aral.
Is interesting how two separate minds can think the same in different times.
P.D. I would like to work on any project, if have something just contact me
April 3rd, 2007 at 4:19 pmasai
I’m glad that Patrick has decided to work with Aral on this project. Really, the core problem is not that there’s too many options for remoting, but that developers are divided among each other and refuse to work together because of petty differences of opinion. Both Patrick and Aral are very talented individuals, it would be a shame for them to be divided over such a thing, so congratulations, Patrick, for making a higher choice. More comes out of skilled people working together than through factionalism.
April 3rd, 2007 at 4:58 pmasai
Even if it’s an April Fool (duh) too bad it’s not true.
April 3rd, 2007 at 5:27 pmaral
Hi asai,
I think there’s a place for both SWX and remoting. They serve very different needs and I have made a conscious effort to make sure that SWX works really well with Amfphp. (In fact, the SWX bundles will *include* Amfphp and I will be releasing examples that show how useful they are together.)
So, no, we are not working together with Patrick on this but I have the utmost respect for Patrick and for Amfphp (in fact, if you look in the docs, you’ll see Patrick listed in the acknowledgments — his work on Amfphp is inspirational) and SWX and Amfphp will work really well together (and that’s no joke!)
April 3rd, 2007 at 6:23 pmNicolas
May I join the project too ?
April 3rd, 2007 at 8:24 pmaral
Of course, dude
April 4th, 2007 at 8:35 amasai
Yeah,
Patrick (and crew) really has done a great service to bring open source remoting to the community.
I think that simplicity in implementation is really important. For me, being a novice developer, learning AMFPHP was really hard, perhaps something like SWX would have been a good method to introduce remoting (and AMFPHP). I’m sure there are many many developers out there who could appreciate a simpler approach to remoting.
There’s no substitute for experience, and skills (and needs) will outgrow APIs eventually. If a given API can smoothly integrate with another more complicated one, or be an introduction for less experienced developers to use their existing skillsets, then amen!
April 4th, 2007 at 4:51 pm