What's next?

Phew! I am done with v1.4. I am doing last minute checks and packing the distribution. The actionscript files will now be packed into a .mxp (Macromedia Extension). So what's changed in v1.4? Lots! This is a version I am finally happy with (I know, I know... the previous ones should have been named beta, but hey! they worked nevertheless, albeit lacking the elegance you will be seeing in v1.4).

Will put up the file for download by the end of tomorrow. This version should be good enough for awhile. Don't expect to see v1.5 coming up too soon... although it will come, eventually.

So what's next for PHPObject? I guess I will eventually post an example of a credentials handler to be used with v1.4, which has the setCredentials method. But it is not difficult to roll your own, right now. The vehicle is already in place.

I am also working on implementing recordsets, but it is likely to be different from the way macromedia's flash remoting does it. Actually, I haven't studied in detail how flash remoting does it, but I won't want to receive every server result as recordsets (not when I just want a 'true' or 'false', or a string). It should be used only with database queries, or tasks that return 'records'. It will probably be implemented with a database connectivity add-on. Well, not that you cannot easily connect to a database from Flash MX using PHPObject now... but the add-on will make things easier and support recordsets. And it will support pageable recordsets, and it will fetch more records in the background after the first batch.

And then there is also the idea of persistent objects, which will, if implemented, allow objects to persist on the server, enabling us to send only properties that have changed (since last connection) to the server. This will result in smaller messages to be sent to the server.

But I think all those things will have to wait a while. I think with v1.4, PHPObject has reached a state of well-being. Now, I sit, wait and hear, and see if it is worthwhile to continue working on this library.