Question

Say we have the following XML:

<people>
 <person>
  <name>Jake</name>
  <skills>
   <skill>JavaScript</skill>
   <skill>HTML</skill>
   <skill>Flex</skill>
   <skill>CSS</skill>
  </skills>
 </person>
 <person>
   <name>John</name>
   <skills>
    <skill>C++</skill>
    <skill>Foxpro</skill>
   </skills>
 </person>
 <person>
  <name>Josh</name>
  <skills>
   <skill>JavaScript</skill>
   <skill>XML</skill>
   <skill>Flex</skill>
  </skills>
 </person> 
</people>

What I want to be able to do with E4X is find all person objects that match a list/array of skills I pass it. So, say I want find all people with either HTML or JavaScript skills.

I know I can do:

people.person.(descendants("skill").contains("HTML"))

or

people.person.(descendants("skill").contains("JavaScript"))

But I really want (/need) to do it one line (it’s part of a XMLListCollection filter function in Flex).

Something like this would be ideal

people.person.(descendants("skill").contains("HTML","JavaScript"))

Although I tried variations on that theme and got nowhere. What would be great would be:

people.person.(descendants("skill").in("HTML", "JavaScript"))

or something like that.

Anybody know if what I’m doing is possible?

I really want to avoid adding my own loops in there.

Jake

Answer 1

Didn’t verify this with the compiler but this should work…

people.person.(descendants("skill").contains("HTML") || descendants("skill").contains("JavaScript"))

Here’s another take —

If you want to check against an Array within the E4X statement, I guess you’re out of luck. There is one possible workaround though, but it involves using a custom function inside the E4X, and simply moving the loop outside of your main code block. Kind of redundant, if you really want to avoid loops.

var skillsArray:Array = ["HTML", "JavaScript"];
var peopleWithSkills:XMLList = people.person.(matchSkills(descendants("skill"), skillsArray));

function matchSkills(xmlList:XMLList, skillsArray:Array):Boolean
{
    for each (var personSkill:XML in xmlList)
    {
        if (skillsArray.indexOf(personSkill.toString()) > -1)
        {
            return true;
        }
    }

    return false;
}

My best suggestion would be to really look into your heart and decide whether you need to avoid the loops, or if you just want to avoid them. 😉