After drawing a bitmap of a display object, I need to save the bitmap, as well as text input, locally and avoid system dialogs that flash player would otherwise display while saving out. Can this be achieved with PHP? I've read that Air handles this task pretty effectively, but I'm rather inexperienced with both platforms. Any help would be greatly appreciated! thanks...
No you can't. Allowing webapps to save data on the local system without permission is a HUGE security risk (I could write a legitimate-looking webapp that saves spyware on your system). Flash disallows it for this reason.
Desktop-based (AIR) apps, however, can open a FileStream in the FileMode.WRITE mode and write data to it without any prompts from the user.
EDIT Since you are looking for a desktop based app, here are a few pointers:
var randomname:String=Math.floor(Math.random() * 1024).toString(16) + ".png"
var f:File=File.desktopDirectory.resolvePath("photos/" + randomname);
var s:FileStream=new FileStream();
s.open(f, FileMode.WRITE);
s.writeBytes(bytesArray); //bytesArray contains the binary data to write to the file
s.close();
Refer to FileReference.save() for that purpose.
And yes, it requires a user interaction (would be a nightmare otherwise).
This is your only option if you are unwilling to use AIR and FileStream class.
AIR file apis don't have that limitation, but require you to run a desktop app.
Well, you can always use local SharedObject for storing some data, but you will get it AMF-encoded in this case. This will work both with AIR and web apps.