Since I put the Atlas PHP sample out a week ago, I've been receiving some great feedback about it.
In particular, Christian Wenz, who literally wrote the book on Atlas, has been invaluable in helping me clean up the sample and make it conform to good PHP practices. He has actually been editing my files and sending them back to me with his recommended changes. Many, many thanks to Christian for his help. Christian was here in Redmond this week for a Technology Summit, and it was great to meet up with him in person and discuss Atlas and PHP. I also want to use this opportunity to plug his Atlas book, currently available in online form - it's absolutely awesome!
In addition, many readers pointed out that the sample doesn't work on Firefox. When I put it together, I forgot that one of the key things the Atlas ASP.NET ScriptManager control does is detect the source browser, and automatically send down the right set of compat scripts. I've created a new PHP version of the ScriptManager to do the same.
Others were confused by the weird naming of the files - unfortunately, that came from the original MIX demo, where I arranged the demo files so they would show up in the right order in the VS Solution Explorer. I've gone and cleaned up the filenames to be more understandable. Just drop all the files in a subdirectory off your site root called 'Examples', add the Atlas script libraries (in the Program Files directory of your Atlas installation) into a ScriptLibrary subdirectory, then hit http://server/examples.
The most unusual catch was from luca, who found an .aspx reference lurking in the main page. In fact, to make sure my stack was 100% compatible on the wire with ASP.NET, I literally viewed the source of my ASP.NET output, saved it as a .php file, and changed all the .asmx references to .php. In doing so, I left the .aspx reference and even a viewstate hidden field in there. The new version cleans this up to avoid confusion.
Got any other ideas for what to do with this sample? Interested in using it to enable yet another "AJAX for PHP" solution on the server? Drop me a line!
The updated samples work with either the March CTP or the new April CTP of Atlas. Download the update to the Atlas PHP sample here.