Releases Archive - SWX: SWF Data Format

Dec 21, 2008 4

SWX v2 beta Released, Public Gateway Updated

We have just pushed SWX v2.00 beta live on the project's Google Code page!

Along with this release the public gateway has also been updated to use SWX PHP v2.00 beta and allow for AS3 support. You can find documentation here, which shows how to use the new AS3 API as well as provides an introduction to the new Simple Call and Custom Call methods of interacting with your SWX gateway.

Lastly, Folkert Hielema has contributed an updated Twitter service and a new Identi.ca service. Both of these services are live on the public gateway (you can test them in the Service Explorer) and also available in the SWX PHP download available on the Google Code page under "Featured Downloads".

We will continue to work on updating this blog with new documentation, but until then please refer to this documentation - it should provide you with everything you need to get started with v2.

If you notice any issues, please log them here. For support or to discuss the new release, please use the project's mailing list.

This release has been a huge effort by the SWX development team, and has been in the works since September. I'm sure you'll enjoy using it as much as we've enjoyed coding it.

Can't wait to see what you build!

Sep 13, 2007 4

SWX PHP 1.01 (Minor update) Released

In response to a possible PHP configuration-related issue where the SWX PHP Start Page may not display correctly for some users, I've updated the SWX PHP and SWX PHP Deployment Bundle packages with a .01 (minor) release.

If you are affected by this, please download the latest release of SWX PHP.

The issue does not affect the SWX PHP MAMP Bundle, which remains at 1.0.

I want to thank Tom Beaver for reporting the issue to me in great detail and working with me to test the solution. Thanks, Tom!

Sep 11, 2007 7

SWX PHP and SWX ActionScript Library Version 1.0 Released

SWX PHP 1.0 and SWX ActionScript Library 1.0 Release Announcement

It's my great pleasure to announce that after six months of alphas and betas, SWX PHP 1.0 and SWX ActionScript Library 1.0 are now available for download.

The major changes from SWX PHP Release Candidate 1 include a revamped Start Page with new, royalty-free icons, and a friendly new list view for the Services and Flash examples folders.

I've also updated the SWX Nabaztag API so that you can now specify the voice that you want your Nabaztag bunny to talk in and you can move its ears and send it ear and LED choreographies. You can test out and use the SWX Nabaztag API and the other SWX APIs (Flickr, Twitter, etc.) directly from the Public SWX Gateway using the SWX Service Explorer.

Finally, there's a new LOG_ALL configuration option in swx_config.php that determines whether non-error (status, info, profiling) messages are written to the PHP error log. Set this to false on deployments for better performance. The setting defaults to true as it is useful for troubleshooting during development.

Update: Based on Jon MacDonald's suggestion (thanks, Jon!), I've also created a SWX PHP Deployment Bundle to make it easier for you to deploy SWX PHP to your server. Use the regular SWX PHP and SWX PHP MAMP Bundles to develop with and then deploy the lean-and-mean deployment bundle to your server. The deployment bundle is much smaller than the regular build as it doesn't contain the source code for the Flex-based tools or the sample Flash FLA files.

The release of SWX PHP 1.0 and SWX ActionScript Library 1.0 is something I've been looking forward to for quite a while now and I hope that SWX simplifies your development life and makes it as fun for you to create Flash and Flash Lite applications and mashups as it has for me.

In the next two months, I'm going to be traveling around the world to talk about SWX at FlashForward Boston, FlashForum Conference in Germany, MAX Chicago, MAX Barcelona, FITC Hollwood, MAX Japan, and Flash on the Beach in my home town of Brighton, in the UK. In addition to this, development work continues (I just made my first post-1.0 commit to the SVN repository) and will include efforts to create a Flash 9 version of SWX PHP, as well as SWX RPC implementations for Ruby, Python, J2EE, and .Net.

In the next few days, I will be releasing Internet Drafts for SWX and SWX RPC which I hope will become Informational RFCs.

Here's to Version 1.0! This is just the beginning.

Read the full release notes for SWX PHP 1.0 and download the 1.0 release.

Sep 11, 2007 1

Release Notes for SWX PHP 1.0

SWX PHP start page: You will now receive a warning if you're running an unsupported (older) version of PHP (e.g. 4.3.x)
SWX PHP Start Page: Added friendly views for services folder and examples folder directory listings.
SWX PHP Start Page: Services folder and flash examples folder now display the operating system path to the folders.
SWX PHP: Added LOG_ALL configuration variable that determines whether non-error (status, info, profiling) messages should be written to the PHP error log. Set this to false on deployments for better performance. Useful during development. Defaults to true.
Nabaztag API: Updated with new methods to move ears and to send choreographies. The talk method now takes an optional voice argument that can change the voice that the rabbit talks in.
SWX Service Explorer and SWX Data Analyzer: Documentation links now lead to their own subpages on swxformat.org.
SWX PHP Start Page: The data type tests bar now resizes correctly even after the tests are complete.
SWX PHP Start Page: Replaced existing placeholder OS X icons with royalty-free ones.
Updated all visual elements to reflect the 1.0 version number (we're out of Beta, woohoo!)

Sep 3, 2007 5

SWX PHP and SWX ActionScript Library Release Candidate 1 Released

I just released Release Candidate 1 (RC1) of SWX PHP and the SWX ActionScript Library. The SWX PHP MAMP Bundle has also been updated to RC1. Get them now from the download page.

There is a whole slew of changes in this update and you can find the whole list in the release notes for SWX PHP RC1.

One of the major changes is that SWX RPC calls can now return simple data types as opposed to the previous behavior which was to wrap simple data types in an array. This may break your existing applications, so please read these instructions for updating your SWX applications to SWX PHP RC1.

Among the highlights of the RC1 release is the release of the SWX Flickr API, which has been available on the Public SWX Gateway for a little while now. The SWX Flickr API implements the full Flickr API and has some additional utility methods that make it the easiest way to work with Flickr in Flash. Take a look at the miniflickr Flash Lite sample application that comes with this release to learn how to work with the new Flickr API as well as some of the advanced features of the SWX ActionScript Library like the ExternalAsset and LoadManager classes.

SWX PHP RC1 has two more new APIs: The Jaiku API and Numpa API (Numpa is the Netherlands version of Twitter), both by my dear friend Folkert Hielema. You can find Folkert's other SWX-related work, as well as the work of other community members, in the new SWX Showcase.

You can explore and test all of the SWX APIs online using the SWX Service Explorer.

The SWX Data Analyzer has also been updated and now supports the display of simple data types correctly. It also displays debug information in a clearer manner.

With the RC1 release, the SWX ActionScript Library is available as a separate download. This means that if you don't want to write your own server-side classes, you don't have to download the full SWX PHP package just to use the high-level ActionScript classes.

Unless there are any major issues discovered in the next few days, Release Candidate 1 is going to be very close to the final release version of SWX PHP and the SWX ActionScript Library. If you do notice any issues, please report them to me. SWX PHP is now in feature freeze and only critical bugs will be fixed at this point (no new feature requests, etc.) In the next few days, I'm going to be updating the documentation, making some aesthetic changes, and recording more screencasts to prepare SWX PHP for the Version 1.0 release next week.

We're very close to Version 1.0, and that's just the beginning!

Sep 2, 2007 0

Release notes for SWX PHP RC1

SWX RPC: MAY BREAK EXISTING APPS, read these instructions for updating your applications to SWX PHP RC1! Root data type can be any supported data type (bool, int, float, string, associative array/object, array)
SWX PHP: Flash 6 support. SWX PHP created SWX files work with Flash 6+.
SWX PHP: E_NOTICE errors are no longer returned to Flash but ignored. (Thanks to Alex Tur for reporting this.)
SWX PHP: Start page simplified with links to swxformat.org and online documentation.
SWX PHP: Added SWX RPC data type tests to the start page.
SWX PHP: The SWX RPC data type tests on the start page now automatically detect the gateway URL and display the gateway URL on successful completion.
SWX ActionScript Library: Changed event constant values to lowercase on ExternalAsset class.
SWX ActionScript Library: LoadManager broadcasts PROGRESS events when a new item in the queue starts to load.
SWX ActionScript Library: Updated to compile under Flash 6.
Flickr API: Implemented the full official Flickr API.
Flickr API: getUserPhotos() no longer makes unnecessary API call to urls_getUserPhotos. Uses the NSID instead.
Flickr API: getUserPhotos() renamed to swxGetUserPhotos(). All SWX Flickr API extensions now start with "swx" to separate them from the official Flickr API methods.
Flickr API: Added file upload script.
Flickr API: swxGetUserPhotos and swxPhotosGetRecent now return info on total number of pages.
Twitter API: addFriends() returns correct response code. Patch courtesy of Folkert.
Twitter API: Updated all methods to the latest official Twitter API.
Twitter API: Deprecated addFriend, removeFriend in favor of new friendship methods in official Twitter API.
Twitter API: Added getFans() alias for followersWhoAreNotFriends() method.
Twitter API: Updated leaveFriend() and followFriend() methods. They now return the correct status with the latest Twitter screens.
Twitter API: Added notifications() method for turning notifications for a friend on or off.
Data Analyzer: Details and history panel widths now grow when horizontal divider is moved.
Data Analyzer: Added web site links for documentation, etc.
Data Analyzer: Now displays all supported root data types correctly.
Data Analyzer: Resumes following data streams after the history is cleared even if user was viewing historic data previously.
Data analyzer: The open/close tree controls are now enabled/disabled according to the root data type.
Service Explorer: The method tree now has focus by default and the method dropdown does not lose focus on selection. Keyboard navigation of app should be much easier.
Service Explorer: The methods drop-down no longer scrolls up with the parameters.
Service Explorer: Added web site links for documentation, etc.
Sample applications: Updated simple_flickr.fla to use the new Flickr API methods.
Sample applications: Updated all sample applications to RC1 and tested.
Sample applications: All sample applications now use the public SWX gateway by default to ensure that they work regardless of whether there is a properly configured local SWX PHP instance.
Sample applications: Added miniflickr Flash Lite application.
MiniFlickr: Users can no longer go to a non-existing page.
MiniFlickr: Existing thumbnail overlay from previous screen does not display on new screens.
MiniFlickr: Focusrect is now correctly aligned.
MiniFlickr: Pages are correctly centered horizontally.
MiniFlickr: Controls display properly on details screen.
MiniFlickr: Main page load indicator now displays while quickly scrolling pages.

Aug 31, 2007 1

Heads up: Major change in RC1 may break your apps.

Update: I am now in the process of updating the SWX public gateway to the RC 1 code. Please note that if you are using the public gateway and you have not updated to the latest codebase from SVN, your applications may break. I will be releasing SWX PHP RC 1 today.

The upcoming RC1 release has a major change that may break your existing applications. Until this version, the only supported root data type was an array. Everything was returned wrapped in an array. So, for example, if your service class returned the boolean false, it would arrive in Flash through SWX RPC as [false] and you would have to reference it as result[0].

This is was counter-intuitive and wrong but simple to implement initially when I was creating the SWX Assembler for SWX PHP.

Now that SWX RPC is its own protocol, this has to change. The root data type of a returned value in SWX RPC can be boolean, string, number, null, object and array.

This means that if your service classes return simple data types, they will no longer be wrapped in an array. Instead of accessing them as result[0] in your applications, you will simply access them as result.

This change was, unfortunately, necessary. I realize that it will break some of your existing applications.

I am doing a sweep of the existing examples and updating them for RC1, due this weekend (finally!) If you're using the Public SWX gateway for your applications, I suggest that you get the latest version of SWX from the Subversion repository and check your own applications against it as well. I will be updating the Public SWX gateway to RC1 once RC1 is released for download.

Aug 16, 2007 0

What is SWX, how does it work, and where is it going?

I just made a comprehensive blog post describing what SWX is (with new definitions for SWX, SWX RPC, SWX PHP, etc.), how it works and the current roadmap on my blog: What is SWX, how does it work, and where is it going?

Jul 18, 2007 7

SWX Beta 1.3 Released

I just released SWX Beta 1.3 which fixes issues we discovered during the first SWX Monday meet-up. It also adds a feature request from Folkert for more robust error messages and a fault handler in the SWX Full API.

Here are the full list of updates in Beta 1.3:

SWX gateway: Errors are now returned as Objects with error (boolean), errorNumber, and errorNumber properties.
SWX Full API: Added fault handler support. You add a fault handler just like result, progress, and timeout handlers. e.g., fault: [this, faultHandler] in the call parameters object you pass the swx call() method.
BaseService no longer shows up in the methods drop-down in Explorer for any of the APIs.
Added checks for safe mode and open basedir (CURL followlocation will fail in both these situations), and mod_security (cross-domain data access fails with default ruleset) that alert user potential problems instead of failing silently .
PHP 5: Fixed strict mode errors causing calls to fail (e.g. Flickr.getUserPhotos).
MAMP Bundle: Now defaults to the correct default directory on start up.
Flash examples: Saved all files in Flash 8 format.
Flash examples: Added .. to the classpath of all example FLAs so they compile out of the box.
Flash examples: Set mobile examples to FL 2.0 not 2.1 to be F8 compatible.
Flash examples: Removed old example files.

The new fault handler in the SWX Full API gets called with a fault object that has code and message properties.

Please note that the result handler will not get called when there is a fault.

If you have never installed the SWX MAMP Bundle and you have a Mac, I would appreciate it if you can confirm for me that the correct start page appears when you first run it (I'm finding it difficult to test this on mine as MAMP is caching the value somewhere.)

I am going to be recording new screencasts for SWX Beta 1.3 before my talk at the Boston Flash Mobile User Group this Friday.

Enjoy!

Jul 9, 2007 2

SWX Beta 1.2.2 Released

I just released another very minor point release of SWX. Download SWX Beta 1.2.2.

What's new in 1.2.2:

The SWX image on the start page was missing from previous Beta 1.2.x releases. If your aesthetic sensibilities can live with that, you don't need to upgrade from 1.2.1!

(I will be upgrading the SWX MAMP Bundle from 1.2 to 1.2.2, so you should upgrade to 1.2.2 if you're using the MAMP Bundle in order to get the changes in 1.2.1).

SWX: SWF Data Format