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« XML vs. AS2 - scoping callbacks | Back to Main | FlashForward update »

February 27, 2004

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The ultimate AS2 XML solution!
Posted by Grant
Yesterday I posted a way to maintain scope inside of an XML callback. Today, I decided to take it one step further, and build out the XML object I always wish for (partly inspired by this post by Keith Peters at Bit-101 that someone pointed me to after I made my post yesterday). The sad thing is, it took me about 30 minutes to code - if I had done this 6 months ago, I could probably have saved myself hours of work. Procrastination sucks.

There are 2 major features gaps in the current XML object as I see it (well 2 that I feel like addressing, anyway):

It uses old-school Flash 5 style callbacks for its events.
It doesn't ever time-out, so you have to write elaborate code constructs to keep track of your XML requests (this goes for loadvars and loadMovie too, but one thing at a time), and make sure they don't take too long.

In order to address these, I created XML2 (that's not just a lazy name, it's XML for AS2), which extends XML, implements eventDispatcher to broadcast it's load event (no support for onData yet), and adds a timeout property that lets you specify an interval in milliseconds after which to timeout on the request (7000ms by default). It's even compatible with gDispatcher (if only I was allowed to distribute it, dang EULA).

Here's what it looks like in use:

// import the class
import com.gskinner.net.XML2;

myXML = new XML2();
// subscribe to its load event:
myXML.addEventListener("load",this);

// set the timeout period to 3 seconds (default is 7s):
myXML.timeout = 3000;

// this should timeout after 3 seconds:
myXML.load("http://1.1.1.1/nofile.xml");

// function to handle the load event:
function load(p_evtObj:Object):Void {
   var XMLObj:XML = p_evtObj.target;
   trace("success: "+p_evtObj.success);
   trace("status: "+XMLObj.status);
   trace("toString: "+XMLObj.toString());
}

You can download the XML2 class by clicking here. Happy coding.

Posted @ 10:57 AM by Grant | TrackBack

Comments

This is a welcome addition, I've spent some time trying to figure out the best OOP way to import XML and this helps a lot.

I'm currently trying to mix XML2 with XPath (http://www.xfactorstudio.com/Actionscript/AS2/XPath/)

Posted by: iS at April 12, 2004 02:16 PM

Nice work! I don't know how you get on, but I had to alter the constructor to ignore whitespace:

function XML2(p_xml:String) {
super(p_xml);
this.ignoreWhite = true;
EventDispatcher.initialize(this);
}

Posted by: Peter Cohen at April 23, 2004 10:40 PM

Peter,

it extends XML, so you can use it exactly the same as XML:

myXML = new XML2();
myXML.ignoreWhite = true;
myXML.load("blah.xml");

Cheers,
Grant.

Posted by: Grant Skinner at April 23, 2004 11:55 PM

Nice work. Earlier today I came up with this. It's another way to 'update' XML for AS2 style event model, for your interest:

/////////////////////////////////////////////

// set the XML objects onLoad method to undefined,
// else UIEventDispatcher wont add load events:
myXML.onLoad = undefined;

mx.events.UIEventDispatcher.initialize(myXML);

myXML.addEventListener('load', this);

/////////////////////////////////////////////

cheers

bruce

Posted by: Bruce Pomeroy at April 29, 2004 06:37 AM

Thanks Grant,

I realised, but why doesn't your example? If I put your example together with XML2, it doesn't work -- without altering one or the other. Or perhaps it's...

Do you use whiteless xml?

peter

Posted by: Peter Cohen at May 25, 2004 10:38 PM

Peter, yes you may need to add

myXML.ignoreWhite = true;

to use the above example to load xml without the whitespace stripped out.

Cheers.

Posted by: Grant Skinner at May 26, 2004 01:00 AM