Our web application has a feature which uses Flash (AS3) to take photos using the user's web cam, then passes the resulting byte array to PHP where it is reconstructed and saved on the server.

However, we need to be able to take this web application offline, and we have chosen Gears to do so. The user takes the app offline, performs his tasks, then when he's reconnected to the server, we "sync" the data back with our central database.

We don't have PHP to interact with Flash anymore, but we still need to allow users to take and save photos. We don't know how to save a JPG that Flash creates in a local database. Our hope was that we could save the byte array, a serialized string, or somehow actually persist the object itself, then pass it back to either PHP or Flash (and then PHP) to recreate the JPG.

We have tried: - passing the byte array to Javascript instead of PHP, but javascript doesn't seem to be able to do anything with it (the object seems to be stripped of its methods) - stringifying the byte array in Flash, and then passing it to Javascript, but we always get the same string:

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Now we are thinking of serializing the string in Flash, passing it to Javascript, then on the return route, passing that string back to Flash which will then pass it to PHP to be reconstructed as a JPG. (whew). Since no one on our team has extensive Flash background, we're a bit lost.

Is serialization the way to go? Is there a more realistic way to do this? Does anyone have any experience with this sort of thing? Perhaps we can build a javascript class that is the same as the byte array class in AS?