Flex Article

Retrieving Drupal nodes with Flex 2

Note: This article was created based on Flex 2. Minor changes in the description and code may be necessary before it can be applied to Flex 3.

The use of PHP and MySQL as a back end for Adobe Flex applications can be a powerful combination for web developers dealing with clients who do not require enterprise-level solutions. Drupal—a modular, PHP-based content management system—can further enhance this marriage of technologies by providing a nearly instant, structured environment for managing data and content. With the introduction of the Services module for Drupal 5.x written by Scott Nelson, Drupal provides an optional integrated API for creating Flex or Flash applications driven by the Drupal framework. In this tutorial, I'll show you a basic operation for such an application: retrieving a node from Drupal.

Note: This tutorial is based on an example by Alexander Crugnola, in the example, Flex with AMFPHP. Please note that Alexander Crugnola's example is not specific to Drupal.

Requirements

In order to make the most of this article, you need the following software and files:

Software components:

Flex Builder 2

• Try
• Buy

• Drupal 5.0 or greater
• AMFPHP 1.9 Beta 1
• Drupal AMFPHP module
• Drupal Services module

Web server components:

• A web server (Apache recommended)
• PHP Version 5.2.0 or greater
• MySQL 4.1.x or greater OR PostgreSQL 7.3 or greater

Sample code for this tutorial

• drupal_and_flex.zip (ZIP, 2K)

Prerequisites:

• Intermediate knowledge of PHP
• Intermediate knowledge of Adobe Flex
• Basic familiarity with Drupal

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