PhotoPal (maybe PhotoViewr) ?
I spent some time the last week working on my dad’s website (he runs a portable Pet Photography Studio). Specifically, I was working on a AS3, PHP+SQL application that would give his clients a preview of their photos before they order them.
I hadn’t worked on a PHP project in ages and the language was just as a I remembered it: Really ugly code that does exactly what I need it to do.
The Flash to PHP communication was handled via XML-RPC for PHP and XMPRC for Asctionscript 3.0. XML-RPC is a set of libraries that help you ferry data from one system to another. It took me a little while to get the knack for preparing the RPC Objects, but ultimately it was a painless process.
What I was left with is a (ugly as hell) back-end interface in PHP that outputs to an attractive (I think) Flash front-end.
The advantages here are:
- My dad doesn’t need to know any code to get this to work, he browses his file system for images and the PHP code takes care of everything else.
- Clients (who lack tech savvy) can’t download the JPEGs and print illicit images like they could with a pure HTML/PHP interface.
- My dad doesn’t need to re-size his Images to fit flash as the PHP script will take care of that.
- The PHP/SQL link up lets me save favourites and do per image click user tracking.
- A Flash interface is just cooler!
I think my favourite part of this app is the Transition class, it transitions between any two display objects with a fade & re-size. I’m using that class to display everything in the main window. If anyone shows interest I’ll go ahead and clean up the class and post it here.
Anyhow. You can see the app in action here. Use ‘Reese‘ as a password.
If anyone is curious you can see my Dad’s Flickr page here.
Oh and if you’re wondering about the blog post title. I have no idea what to call this application. I’ll gladly take suggestions in the comments section!
