Question

Folks,

I have the following xml in ActionScript.

var xml:XML = <Top>
                <Component>
                   <type>Button</type>
                   <id></id>
                   <width>50</width>
                   <height>20</height>
                   <x>0</x>
                   <y>0</y>
                </Component>
                <Component>
                   <type>Label</type>
                   <id></id>
                   <width>30</width>
                   <height>10</height>
                   <x>0</x>
                   <y>0</y>
                </Component>
             </Top>;

Now, I want to read/parse this xml string and then generate Flex controls (i.e Buttons, Label) according to their respective properties.

How to do that ?

Thanks.

Answer 1

import flash.xml.XMLDocument;
import mx.rpc.xml.SimpleXMLDecoder;
public static function xmlToObject(x:XML):Object{
    var xmlStr:String = x.toString();
    var xmlDoc:XMLDocument = new XMLDocument(xmlStr);
    xmlDoc.ignoreWhite=true;
    var decoder:SimpleXMLDecoder = new SimpleXMLDecoder(true);
    var resultObj:Object = decoder.decodeXML(xmlDoc);
     return resultObj;
}

I use this code to convert xml to Objects. Then it is REALLY simple to use the xml.

For example, your xml would look like:

var xml:XML = <Top>
                <Component>
                   <type>Button</type>
                   <id></id>
                   <width>50</width>
                   <height>20</height>
                   <x>0</x>
                   <y>0</y>
                </Component>
                <Component>
                   <type>Label</type>
                   <id></id>
                   <width>30</width>
                   <height>10</height>
                   <x>0</x>
                   <y>0</y>
                </Component>
             </Top>;

and

var o:Object=xmlToObject(xml);

var top:Object=o.Top;
var componentArrayC:ArrayCollection=top.Component;
for each(var cmp:Object in componentArrayC) {
    //You would have these properties:
    cmp.type;
    cmp.id;
    cmp.width;
    cmp.height;
    cmp.x;
    cmp.y;
}