From the UltraVisual blog there's a recent post showing how you can get PHP Eclipse working with FDT/Flash Builder and Ant to create some custom automated tasks.

OK, so lately I have been doing a lot of work in both FDT & Flash builder and building data centric applications with PHP and mySQL back ends, it has been vital that my work flow has been up to scratch to ensure that these project's deadlines have been met and also so that I don't go crazy doing loads of crap that I don't need to do! As I have been very pleased with the ways things have run I though it best to share my set up with a wider audience.

He shows you how to set up Ant support for Flash Builder and get the "PHPEclipse Stable Builds" package installed for your Eclipse instance. His example shows his process of having all of his files in one place, regardless of their type. A code snippet for the URLLoader is included as well as an Ant XML configuration to make the task work.

On the Adobe Developer Connection there's a recent tutorial posted looking at combining PHP and Flex to make a simple charting application.

One area in which Flex and PHP go really well together is in creating data visualizations. PHP makes it incredibly easy to retrieve information from a database and manipulate it. For its part, Flex provides a user interface layer that is interactive and capable of quickly calculating shapes, which is perfect for charting.

The article focuses on the structure of the data between the PHP application and the Flex frontend (since it needs a bit more definition than some of the usual PHP methods for plotting charts). The files needed to follow along with the tutorial are available for download as well as links to try or buy Flash Builder. In the end, you'll have a chart like this for your efforts.

On SoftDevTube.com they've posted a new tutorial screencast talking about how you can write Flex and PHP inside Flash Builder and Zend Studio.

This video explains how to write Flex and PHP code using Flash Builder 4 and Zend Studio 7.1. It also illustrates how remoting enables your application to consume PHP services.

The video's about ten minutes long and comes from Adobe TV. There's no way to download the sample application they create, but they walk you through all of the steps you'll need, right down to getting PHP integrated into Flash Builder.

Mihai Corlan has posted a new tutorial to his blog today looking at how to debug a Zend Framework and Flex application with the help of Eclipse PDT and XDebug.

As your projects grow in size and more people get involved you’ll find yourself fixing more and more bugs. When this happens, one of the best friends a developer has is the debugger. In this paper, I’ll talk about some of the workflows and tools you can use to debug Flex and PHP projects.

He shows you an example of the debugging with a sample script you can link to your Zend Framework installation (including a database backend). From there he includes the instructions on how to use Flash Builder 4 and the Eclipse PDT + XDebug combo to use the Flex debugger or PHP debugger (in Eclipse) to find the problems in the code.

On the Geekzguru.net site there's a guide posted (from June 13th) about how to get PDT and Flash Builder to let you debug both sides of your application (the Flex side and PHP side) at the same time.

This setup allows you to edit and debug you PHP files along with your flex application in the same instance of eclipse. All features of PDT like PHP code coloring, auto complete will be available in addition to the wonderful features that Flash Builder 4 provides.

They walk you through the installation of the Eclipse PDT software, the XDebug module for debugging your PHP and how to modify your Flex project's files to modify the .project file's XML with a new linked resource.

On the Zend Developer Zone there's a new tutorial on how to use the combination of Doctrine and more PHP to connect with Flash Builder to create a simple classified ad system.

This article shows how to set up Doctrine and use it in PHP code. Then, it exposes PHP services to Adobe Flash Platform applications using Zend_Amf. You'll then call the Doctrine-enabled services from a Flex client. Finally, I'll show you how to switch your database from MySQL to SQLite with four lines of code. And I won't write a single SQL statement.

He shows how to set up a full Apache/MySQL/PHP installation with Doctrine, Flash Builder Alpha and the latest edition of the Zend Framework. He shows how to set up the models, connect Flash Builder to the app via the Zend_Amf component and how to build the frontend for the app inside Flash Builder.

On his blog today Piotr Walczyszyn has posted a tutorial on getting an Eclipse instance set up with the PHP development tools (PDT) and a Flash Builder plugin to get ready for developing Flex and PHP applications.

In this tutorial I will explain how to configure development environment to work with PHP and Flex projects in one tool. In order to do that I will use Eclipse PDT 2.1 (PHP Eclipse plugin), Flash Builder 4 Plug-in Beta 2 and latest Eclipse IDE for Java EE Developers package which is eclipse-jee-galileo-SR1-macosx-carbon (of course if you are on Windows you should get proper version instead) at the moment. Additionally I will use MAMP (Mac, Apache, MySQL, PHP stack), of course there are other possible solutions like WampServer for Windows, multiplatform XAMPP or Zend Server.

He links to all of the downloads for you (much appreciated) and walks you through the installation complete with screenshots and configuration settings you'll need to get things integrated.

On the Zend Developer Zone a recent article has been posted looking a using Adobe Flash Builder with the Zend Framework to create a simple datagrid interface.

The first part of the strategic alliance between Adobe and Zend was adding support for Adobe Action Message Format (AMF) for high-speed data communication between the client and server. This was done by developing and deploying the Zend_Amf module as part of the Zend Framework. The second facet of this alliance is tight integration between the Zend Framework and Flash Builder. In this article, you learn how to take advantage of the new data-centric features of Flash Builder and the seamless integration with the Zend Framework.

The tutorial walks you through setting up a PHP server, creating a service on that server and writing the code for its functionality (getAllItems, updateItem, deleteItem, etc). Set up the return type, map the data to the datagrid and run the sample app - you're all set!