Why use Remoting ... why amfphp?

[Jorge Solis]

From Patrick Mineault posted in the amfphp list

So why would you use AMFPHP? Maybe the first question to answer is why you would want to use Remoting. Here is a rundown:

- It's faster than XML or LoadVars
- You don't have to think hard to find a scheme for your data like XML or LoadVars
- It scales much better than any other solution
- The actionscript 2.0 classes provided by Macromedia are well-thought out, use an event model that'll fit any coding style
- The v2 components are made to consume Remoting RecordSets directly, which means populating a datagrid from a database takes about 3 lines of AS, two lines of [insert your backend programming language here]
- The RecordSet object includes stuff like filtering and order out of the box, saving a lot of coding
- Handling complex data types like arrays and resultsets is so much easier than any other solution
- You get the NetConnection debugger, which makes debugging a whole lot easier
- On the PHP side of things, working with XML is a pain, you don't need it with Remoting
- You get free authentication
- You can easily consume webservices (free proxy plus free serializer)
- You get service descriptions from a windowSwf in the IDE
- It's meant to work with FlashComm out of the box
- Standard classes means you can share code between projects and read tutorials and actually understand them

That's just for Remoting. As for AMFPHP itself:

- You work entirely in OOP, resulting in a much cleaner coding style that's easier to maintain.
- Gateway and services are separated, meaning classes are reusable outside of AMFPHP
- AMFPHP is very flexible and only requires one AMFPHP specific variable to be defined per class, methodTable, again meaning it's easy to use your classes outside of AMFPHP
- It's free
- It's fast
- The framework is pattern-based and the programming is real pretty, meaning it's not overly difficult to extend
- It generates code for you through the HTML based service browser, meaning you save yourself a lot of typing (that's good for your wrists and fingers)
- Again, XML is a pain in the ass to work with in PHP, you don't need it anymore with
- The SQL handlers are very complete, meaning you can use mysql, postgre, adodb, sqlite, mysqli, and a few others, and it's incredibly easy to make new sql filters
- You get as verbose errors as you could possibly get with PHP
- You'll get paged recordsets with the new release, which are extremely cool
- Did I mention it scales mcuh better than any other solution you can work with?
- AMFPHP doesn't try to reinvent the wheel, unlike others (like PHPObect), meaning it's interoptable with ColdFusion, ASP.NET, java, python, Perl, whatever remoting you can think of
- We'll have decent documentation very soon, and wiki-based
at that, so users can share their findings and such.
- It's open-source!
- A lot of people with large sites are already using it (like flashcomponents.net), so it's no like some bs project that nobody's ever heard of.
- There are already a lot of resources on AMFPHP (like sephiroth.it and flash-db.com), and it's certainly a lot more community based than some other implementations of Remoting, meaning you're not alone