What are the pros/cons of using AMF vs. serializing data between Flash and a web script/service?

Question

I was using the serializing approach between Flash and PHP for the longest time before AMFPHP had its 1.0 release (wow...that was a long time ago...in 2006)!

Serializing using a sepiroth's AS library paired with PHP's built in serializing functions worked and I didn't change it because it did the job.

Should I switch over to the AMF format and technology? One pro is that the data exchange is probably more efficient for AMF because it's a binary format.

I've also see other scripting languages/frameworks such as Python/Django, Ruby/Rails supporting AMF. I guess AMF is also a standard format. Does each language serialize data differently?

Answer 1

I would definitely go with AMF. One primary benefit is how widely supported it is by several server side languages. AMF is a standard so while some implementations may or may not be a little different across back ends, you can be pretty sure that you ActionScript is going to work with your server side. If you are using PHP, I recommend using the Zend AMF library. It is based on the original AMFPHP but has also received some support from Adobe.

Answer 2

Also check out Weborb, it has support for .NET, Php, Ruby, Java, ...