Richard Bates has a new post to the Flexandair.com blog about the new AMF support that the latest Zend Framework version (1.7) contains - the Zend_Amf component.

To get started with Zend_Amf, you'll first need to download Zend Framework 1.7. To do that, go to the Zend Framework download page and select the 1.7 release (near the bottom of the page). Alternatively, you can download only the components required for Zend_Amf here. This is the current build from the incubator (SVN), so its no more stable than the full release, just smaller (128 kb).

The post includes links to a screencast done by the package author (Wade Arnold) as well as updates from his blog.

He also mentions some of the "pitfalls" that he had when trying to get it up and working, specifically with the class mapping and defining RemoteObject parameters in the code rather than an external XML file.

Andi Gutmans has pointed out an effort that Adobe has proposed that would go a long way towards adding AMF support to the Zend Framework.

This ZF component will allow for client-side applications built with Flex and Adobe AIR to communicate easily and efficiently with PHP on the server-side. Leading the design of the component for Adobe is Wade Arnold. Wade already has a track record of bringing the Adobe RIA technologies to PHP as a result of all of his work on AMFPHP.

Andi sees this as a next logical step to helping the framework become more "Enterprise oriented" and to compliment the recent Dojo integration. The plan is to release it with the 1.7 version of the framework, but the actual timing may vary due to the approval process.