So I took the plunge and setup my first open-source code project.

Here's the idea:

Joomla! is a great Content Management Syste, it's the one that powers this site, as well as most of the sites I have developed. One of the sites I have developed with Joomla had a Flash interface in addition to the usual HTML interface. Developing that Flash interface was really a pain and a very one-off custom solution.

As part of the bridge between Flash and Joomla!, I used AMFPHP. Flash has hooks for a binary data transmission stream called Flash Remoting. It is normally only used between Flash and Cold Fusion servers (another Adobe product). It also is pretty much the only way of allowing Flash to interact directly with a server. AMFPHP is a beautiful solution that allows a developer to take advantage of Flash Remoting, but run it on top of PHP instead of relying on a Cold Fusion server.

So, as it stands today, the only way to integrate a Flash site with a Joomla backend is to use AMFPHP, and build all your own functions in PHP to allow Flash to call what it needs from Joomla.

What I am going to do, is develop a new project called J-AMFPHP. The goal of this project is to build a plugin for Joomla! that completely exposes the Joomla! API to Flash developers through the AMFPHP bridge. This way Flash/PHP developers don't have to keep reinventing every function between Flash and Joomla and instead focus on just the custom ones that they need.

J-AMFPHP project page on JoomlaCode