ActionScript 3.0 Cookbook

Chapter 20. XML

Introduction

XML is a structured, text-based way of formatting and describing data. It was originally designed to be to both simple and flexible and has rapidly grown into an industry standard because of its portability, especially for data exchange and interoperability between applications.

When working in ActionScript, XML will probably cross your path. Chapter 19 explains how to send and load data in a URL-encoded format. URL-encoding is fine for passing simple data between the Flash Player and server-side scripts, but for complex data or Unicode characters, XML generally works much better because of its structured format. For example, if you want to load data from a text file that represents a simple datatype such as a string, URL-encoded data, such as the following, can be loaded using a URLLoader instance:

myString=a+string+value

However, when you want to load data from an external source and use that data to create an ActionScript object, you are presented with the problem of how to represent that data as a URL-encoded string. You might try something like the following, in which each property value pair is separated by an asterisk (*), and each property is separated from its corresponding value by a vertical pipe (|):

myObject=prop0|val0*prop1|val1*prop2|val2

Once the string value is returned for myObject, you could use String.split() to recreate the elements that make up the object. Although you can get by with this approach, it is often much easier to represent ...