Question

Howto sort/print xml data in actionscript

Asked by: MickaelE

Hi there,

im working on an actionscript/xml project that is pulling company names and information out of the xml file.  I have the flash search function working but i would like for each company to display with in its own movie clip, that will then be attached to a "container" movie clip that is holding all of the companies relative to the search.  What would the best method of implementing this.  Would I be able to create all of the movieclips for the companies at once using a forloop in actionscript then once the loop is done have them attach to the container clip?

Thanks for any help that can be offered.

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Asked On
2007-12-12 at 12:25:38ID23019474
Tags

howto

,

flash

,

actionscript

,

data

Topics

Adobe Flash

,

Search Engines

,

Extensible Markup Language (XML)

Participating Experts
2
Points
500
Comments
7

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Answers

 

by: tagitPosted on 2007-12-12 at 14:54:19ID: 20460944

Hi,

I wrote a wrapper function for reading XML from a file into an object ie:

<COMPANY>
    <NAME>XYZ</NAME>
</COMPANY>
<COMPANY>
    <NAME>ABC</NAME>
</COMPANY>

Would be converted to an object so that:

var companies:Object = new Object();

// after loading XML and conversion would allow this:

trace(companies[0].name) // XYZ
trace(companies[1].name) // ABC

Feel free to use it:
http://www.ee-stuff.com/Expert/Upload/getFile.php?fid=6131

Once you have this working you can quite easily create movie clips etc just by looping over the array.

Can you post part of your XML so I can explain further how you would do this in Flash?

 

by: MickaelEPosted on 2007-12-12 at 17:11:21ID: 20461602

Hi and thanks for the response!

Here is  a little bit of the xml code.  all data is arranged like this for about 10000 or so different businesses.

Thank you for the help.

<City_Data>
<Company>&quot;K&quot; Line Canada, Ltd.</Company>
<Suite>302</Suite>
<Street_Number>2800</Street_Number>
<Street_Name>Skymark Ave</Street_Name>
<Street_Address>2800 Skymark Ave</Street_Address>
<City>Mississauga</City>
<Province>ON</Province>
<Postal_Code>L4W 5A6</Postal_Code>
<Phone_Number>9053663638</Phone_Number>
<Contact>Mr. William Lee</Contact>
<Title>General Manager</Title>
<Business_Description>Shipping Services</Business_Description>
<Planning_District>Airport Corporate</Planning_District>
<NAICS>4885</NAICS>
<Status_Code>A</Status_Code>
<Employee>5-9</Employee>
<EmployeeSortCode>2</EmployeeSortCode>
</City_Data>
<City_Data>
<Company>01 Communique Laboratory Inc.</Company>
<Suite>500</Suite>
<Street_Number>1450</Street_Number>
<Street_Name>Meyerside Dr</Street_Name>
<Street_Address>1450 Meyerside Dr</Street_Address>
<City>Mississauga</City>
<Province>ON</Province>
<Postal_Code>L5T 2N5</Postal_Code>
<Phone_Number>9057952888</Phone_Number>
<Internet>www.01com.com</Internet>
<Contact>Miss G Loo</Contact>
<Title>Administration Manager</Title>
<Business_Description>H.O. Computer Software Development</Business_Description>
<Planning_District>Northeast</Planning_District>
<NAICS>5112</NAICS>
<Status_Code>A</Status_Code>
<Employee>20-49</Employee>
<EmployeeSortCode>4</EmployeeSortCode>
</City_Data>

                                              
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by: tagitPosted on 2007-12-12 at 17:15:16ID: 20461626

My XMLParser class would read in that xml and store it in an array of City_Data ie.

trace(myXMLObject.City_Data[1].Company) // 01 Communique Laboratory Inc.

give it a go :)

 

by: tagitPosted on 2007-12-12 at 17:15:48ID: 20461629

BTW - What version of flash are you using?

 

by: MickaelEPosted on 2007-12-12 at 19:26:35ID: 20462142

I am using v9(cs3) but am limited to using as2 code, as that is what someone else had started the project in.  Im going to give the parser a shot in the morning, thanks a lot for the help!

 

by: tagitPosted on 2007-12-12 at 19:45:18ID: 20462220

No Problem and that's good because XMLParser is written in AS2

 

by: JewStarPosted on 2007-12-13 at 00:12:21ID: 20462988

Here's how to loop through an array and create a bunch of movie clips inside a container. You could also use the attachMovie function instead of createEmptyMovieClip.

var arrCompany:Array = your_array_of_companies;
var container_mc = this.createEmptyMovieClip("container_mc",this.getNextHighestDepth());
 
for (var i = 0; i<arrCompany.length; i++) {
   var newCompany_mc = container_mc.createEmptyMovieClip("newCompany_mc"+i,container_mc.getNextHighestDepth());
 
   // Do something with newCompany_mc using arrCompany(i)
}

                                              
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