What is it?

The Flex ArrayCollection is a wrapper around a normal flash/flex array. It adds more functionality, making normal arrays usable in some of the other components of the flex framework.

How SabreAMF deals with it

SabreAMF has an object thats similar to flex' ArrayCollection. All ArrayCollections are automatically mapped to SabreAMF_ArrayCollection.

SabreAMF_ArrayCollections uses PHP's ArrayObject class to store its data.

How to send back arrays as ArrayCollections back to flex

To send an ArrayCollection back to flex, you can simply instantiate SabreAMF_ArrayCollection and return it from your serviceclass objects.

The ArrayCollection works pretty much just like a normal array; The biggest exception is that it doesn't work with some of the PHP array manipulation functions.

<?php

  $data = array();
  $data[] = array('property1'=>'yo','property2'=>'test2');
  $data[] = array('property1'=>'foo','property2'=>'bar');

  $arrayCollection = new SabreAMF_ArrayCollection($data);

  foreach($arrayCollection as $row) {
 
     // So yea, you can just loop through it like a normal array (done through IteratorAggregate)

  }

  // Or get values straight from a certain row (done through ArrayAccess)
  echo($arrayCollection[0]['property1']);

  // Or get the total number of rows (done through countable)

  echo(count($arrayCollection));

  // In the case you need a normal array, based on the ArrayAccess class
 
  $normalArray = iterator_to_array($arrayCollection);

?>