Building Desktop RIAs With PHP And JavaScript

Building Desktop RIAs with PHP and JavaScript Ed Finkler • funkatron.com • @funkatron php|tek 09

What to expect This is mainly a JavaScript talk Compare JS and PHP jQuery framework for JS examples This is mainly a desktop app dev talk Diffs between server app dev and desktop app dev Examples of desktop app <-> server app interaction

Web runtimes A browser engine environment used for building quot;localquot; apps

Current web runtimes AIR (adobe.com/go/air) Titanium (titaniumapp.com) Palm webOS (developer.palm.com)

We'll use AIR But others bear examination

JavaScript in AIR Can use (almost) any available JS libs/frameworks No cross-domain restrictions security restrictions in app sandbox ( eval() ) Access AIR APIs Access standard Flash APIs Use compiled AS3 libs

PHP vs JavaScript JavaScript is fundamentally different JS is a functional language closures ﬁrst-order functions Object model is totally different

PHP vs JavaScript Everything in JS is an object Arrays are not associative – objects serve as associative array equivalents No include/require statements available Event-driven model/asynchronous actions Further reading: – JavaScript: The Deﬁnitive Guide, David Flanagan – JavaScript: The Good Parts, Douglas Crockford

Desktop vs Server-side PHP stack is built up/torn down every time mem leaks not much of an issue exec time < a few seconds max almost always synchronous calls Desktop apps are persistent exec time can be hours or days mem leaks a HUGE issue almost always asynchronous calls

JavaScript frameworks Some stuff is a huge pain without the help of a framework Lots of choices Must play well with AIR eval usage gotchas

jQuery pwnz yoo jQuery is teh awesome but you can use anything

PHP is your server-side buddy PHP tubby jedi master JavaScript hyper frontman Use 5.2 at least (you are, right?) adds native JSON encoding/decoding

PHP talking to AIR Serve data structures instead of HTML Use JSON Use JSON USE JSON do not use XML (if you can avoid it) set the correct mime type (application/json)

Example 1: PHP duz yer math Async calls using jQuery AJAX methods Communicate via JSON Flash Zee Cloud web server Webkit

Example 2: PHP 'shops yer pics Uploading via Flash APIs JSON based communication Flash Zee Cloud web server Webkit

Example 3: DearZend.com JSON based communication Desktop alternative to web front-end Flash Zee Cloud web server Webkit

Additional resources Adobe AIR for JavaScript Developers Pocketguide http://www.tostring.org/ Developing Adobe® AIR™ Applications with HTML and Ajax http://short.ie/ggd9tc Titanium http://titaniumapp.com/ Titanium Forums http://short.ie/d4ponk Searchatron Source http://short.ie/g9z6qt DearZend.com source http://github.com/funkatron/dearzend-server http://github.com/funkatron/dearzend-client

Questions? @funkatron • http://funkatron.com • joind.in/198

Building Desktop RIAs With PHP And JavaScript

by funkatron on May 21, 2009

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Building Desktop RIAs With PHP And JavaScript — Presentation Transcript