I was all set to present at the PHP|Tek show here in Chicago yesterday when I encoutered a very (very very) ugly hard drive failure, 3 slides into my deck. Apple "Geniuses" (we'll see) are working to repair the hard drive right now, and I'll post the slides here if I can get them back. If you're looking for similar slides, these ones from a previous presentation in New York are close, though not exactly the same.

In the meantime, here are a few links that I was discussing during the session.

Picnik is a great application that shows what I would consider to be a rich Internet application. Take a look, and then also check out the Flex showcase for other RIAs that are using Flex. The guys at Active Media Architects were on stage showing off their Activa LiveChat application - another great example of a Flex front end to a PHP backend. Yahoo Maps is probably the most well known example of a PHP based Flex application (Flex 1.5, not Flex 2 though).

To build a PHP based RIA, start by building out a PHP based REST webservice. Essentially this is usuing PHP to print out XML, and then use your RIA client (Flex, Flash, Ajax, Silverlight, whatever) to read in that XML. This is the easiest way to get going. The PHP RIA test drive has examples of how to do this. The Zend Framework has a REST library that can help you with this.

Cal Evans has written a great Flex and PHP tutorial that walks you through something similar at the Zend Developer Zone.

Once you've mastered that, you'll probably want to transfer objects directly from PHP to your client. Use JSON for Ajax, Flash, Flex applications, or AMF for Flash or Flex applications. There's a JSON library built into PHP 5.2, and AMFPHP seems to be a popular choice for AMF developers (SabreAMF and the Midnight Coders have solutions as well).