Question

so live docs says this for calling .lenght() on an XML object

For XML objects, this method always
returns the integer 1. The length()
method of the XMLList class returns a
value of 1 for an XMLList object that
contains only one value.

i called it on an xml that looked like this:

<xml>
<picture>1</picture>
<picture>2</picture>
</xml>

i tried myXML.lenght() and it reallt returned 1. how do i get the number of children in my xml?

Answer 1

Try

var length:int = myXML.children().length();

Also, this is the method I use to make sure the children are really Elements, and not just Text Nodes.

    public static function getNumberChildElements(node:XML):int{
        var count:int = 0;
        for (var i:int=0; i<node.children().length(); i++){
            if (node.children()[i].nodeKind() == "element")
                count++;
        }
        return count;
    }