I’m building a little Flash voting tool that has to get a user’s chooses between two people – giving one or the other a vote/thumbs up for 5-10 categories. When all categories have been voted on between the two people, I send those votes to a database, and return the total tally of votes for the categories BACK to Flash to render results and show the user what the aggregate vote results look like.
Because I could have an infinite # of categories, I need to send some structured XML from Flash:
<votes>
<vote id='1' type='alpha' />
<vote id='2' type='beta' />
<vote id='3' type='tie' />
<vote id='4' type='beta' />
</votes
id = the database “categories” table ID for the category on which I’m voting.
type = alpha, beta, or tie. Basically – there are two people (alpha and beta) – you vote one or the other or give a tie.
I COULD use AMFPHP, but I’m a newb at PHP right now, and for this first version, I will need to use XML.sendAndLoad, send the the code above, parse it in PHP and update the votes database, and then send back some XML with the overall aggregate results.
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How can I keep this simple on the PHP XML parse side? I’ve looked at the PHP XML parser and nearly pooped my pants. It’s nuts. Any suggestions? Should I hunker down and learn how to do this with AMFPHP? Or should I find a way to send structured data via a LoadVars instead? So I’m not parsing XML in PHP?**
Thanks,
IronChefMorimoto
