PEAR is a framework and distribution system for reusable PHP components. The code in PEAR is partitioned in “packages”. Each package is a separate project with its own development team, version number, release cycle, documentation and a defined relation to other packages (including dependencies). Packages are distributed as gzipped tar files with a description file inside, and installed on your local system using the PEAR installer.PEAR contains PHP classes that are perfect for serializing data to be passed to a Flex application. Unfortunately, there is currently no package that would allow automatic installation for a Flex/PHP developer that wants to use the PEAR XML Serializer functionality.
In this article, I am going to describe how to do a local tweak and installation of the PEAR XML classes on a server that does not have PEAR pre-installed. Even if your server has PEAR installed, this approach will work.
Getting the Necessary PEAR Files
The PEAR files you will need for Flex are:
- PEAR.php
- XML_Serializer.php & XML_Unserializer.php
- XML_Util.php
You can obtain these from the PEAR Package listings, but I have attached the modified files for you here.