I just documented the SWX Twitter API for Flash and Flash Lite on the official Twitter Development Talk group.

The SWX Twitter API gives you SWX, AMF, JSON and XML-RPC gateways to the full Twitter API as well as several custom API methods.

The easiest way to play around with the SWX Twitter API is to test it out online by using the PHP Service Browser that comes with SWX:

• Fire up the PHP Service Browser that comes with SWX from:
  http://swxformat.org/php/browser/
• When prompted, enter http://swxformat.org/php/amf.php as the Gateway URL.
• Click on the Twitter service and start experimenting with the various methods.

To see an example of a Twitter mashup created with SWX:

• Open the SWX Analyzer: http://swxformat.org/php/analyzer/
• Open the Twitter Stream Flash sample:
  http://swxformat.org/flash/examples/twitter_stream_1080p.swf
• Check the SWX Analyzer to see the data that was exchanged.

SWX Analyzer is a Flex 2 application that talks to SWX data SWFs that are in debug mode (dataHolderMovieClip.debug = true). It does this via LocalConnection so you can debug remote files as well as local ones.

The PHP Service Browser is a Flex 2 application that hits the SWX Twitter API using Amfphp and the AMF gateway.

One of the cool things about SWX is that it includes another open source project called Amfphp (Flash Remoting for PHP) and SWX services are compatible with Amfphp services. This means that, thanks to Amfphp, you can write a service (like the Twitter service) once and then consume it via SWX by hitting the SWX gateway, get it as AMF (Flash Remoting) by hitting the AMF gateway, or use JSON or XML-RPC.

For example, to get my last ten friend's updates as JSON, you can hit the JSON gateway that comes with SWX by hitting the following URL:

http://swxformat.org/php/json.php/Twitter.getNumFriendsUpdates/aral/1

Feel free to hit the SWX Twitter gateways on swxformat.org when creating your own Twitter mashups:

• SWX gateway: http://swxformat.org/php/swx.php
• AMF gateway: http://swxformat.org/php/amf.php
• JSON gateway: http://swxformat.org/php/json.php

If you're interested in learning more about SWX, you can read an introduction to SWX, browse SWX documentation, and download the latest SWX Alpha.

The SWX Twitter API for Flash and Flash Lite article by Aral Balkan, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0 UK: England License.