Flash User

In a previews post I wrote about how can you load data from an xml file in Actionscript 2.0. For today’s trick I will show you how can you do that using Actionscript 3.0.

1. Prepare your xml file, here is the sample I will use:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" standalone="yes"?>
<images>

    <img image="photos/pic1.jpg" description="This is the first image" />

    <img image="photos/pic2.jpg" description="This is the second image" />

    <img image="photos/pic3.jpg"  description="This is the third image" />

</images>

2. The actionscript 3.0 code for extracting the xml file data:

var xmlData = "images.xml";//set xml data file

var xmlObj: XMLDocument;

init();//init call -> load config XML and create objects

function init() {
	xmlObj = new XMLDocument();
	xmlObj.ignoreWhite = true;

	var loader:URLLoader = new URLLoader();
	var request:URLRequest = new URLRequest(xmlData);
	loader.load(request);

	loader.addEventListener("complete", onComplete);
	loader.addEventListener("ioError", onIOError);
}

function onIOError(event:Event):void {
	trace("IOERROR (maybe XML file does not exit or have an incorrect name)");
}

function onComplete(event:Event):void {
	var loader:URLLoader = event.target as URLLoader;
	if (loader != null) {
		xmlObj.parseXML(loader.data);
		xmlHandler();
	} else {
		trace("Loader is not a URLLoader!");
	}
}

function xmlHandler() {
	addObjects();
}

var numItems;
var objects;

var image:Array = new Array();
var description:Array = new Array();

function addObjects() {//add objects in the scene

	objects = xmlObj.firstChild.childNodes;
	numItems = objects.length;

	for (var i=0; i<numItems; i++) {
		var attr = objects[i].attributes;
		//Set the images
		image[i] = attr.image;
		description[i] = attr.description;
		trace("Path image: "+image[i]+" ------description: "+description[i]);

	}
}

For any questions related to this method leave a comment and I will answer as soon as possible.

Here you can download the sample file.