IntuitiveMedia, LLC

I’ve recently begun working on a website that will require a mixture of technologies:

1. PHP
2. Flash
3. Flash Media Server

In order to get started, I needed to set up a local environment that mirrors my client’s production server.  Instead of trying to manually download, install, and configure all the various technologies needed to get PHP running on my laptop, I opted to try out some ‘packaged’ solutions.  Here are the two options I explored:

• XAMPP
• WAMP
  

I originally tried WAMP, but after a few days the Apache server wouldn’t start.  I don’t know if I did something to break it.  Unfortunately, I ended up having to uninstall it.  I tried re-installing but still had no luck.  Thus, I decided to try out XAMPP.  I’m pleased to announce that XAMPP has been great!

NOTE: Because I already had MYSQL installed on my machine I had to edit the ‘config.inc.php’ file to make sure phpMyAdmin would be able to connect to MySQL.  The file you need to edit is located here:

<XAMPPInstallationDirectory>\phpmyadmin\config.inc.php

Once you open this file find the following settings: (should be lines 20 & 21)

$cfg['Servers'][$i]['user'] = ‘root’;
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['password'] = ‘password’;

You can replace the values ‘root’ and ‘password’ to reflect the existing username and password you want to use to connect to MySQL.

Here’s an excellent article that discusses the various Flex frameworks.  It does a great job of pointing out strengths / weaknesses of each, and can be helpful if you’re trying to decide which one to use.

Flex Framework Comparisons

Links to various Flex frameworks:

Mate(my favorite)

PureMVC

Parsley

Swiz

While writing a custom component today, I needed to conjure up some regular expression magic to force the content of the component to be camelCase.  While digging around for Actionscript Regular Expression syntax, I discovered Paul Robertson’s handy Actionscript Regular Expressions Testing Tool. It’s a real help and a great time saver as well! Thanks, Paul!

If you want to store your CFCs outside of your ColdFusion web root , you can do this by mapping a directory in ColdFusion.  This is all well and good, except by default, Flex isn’t configured to work with mappings.  Here’s the remedy:

1. Navigate to ‘C:\ColdFusion8\wwwroot\WEB-INF\flex\’
2. Open the ‘remoting-config.xml’ file in your favorite text editor.
3. Locate the <use-mappings>false</use-mappings> tag.  (Around line 24 )
4. Change the value to true. <use-mappings>true</use-mappings>

That’s it!  Now you should be able to point your remote objects to the mapped directory you set up for your CFCs using the ColdFusion Administrator.