Question

With bracket notation I can access a direct child node by name or attribute using the following code:

Example XML:

<item name="item1">
   <categories name="catList">
      <category name="cat1">
   </categories>
</item>

Example accessing direct child node:

trace(xml["categories"].toString()); // <categories><category/></categories> 

Example accessing node attribute:

trace(xml["@name"].toString()); // item1

Updated: Is there a way to access a subelement / nested element / nested attribute using only a single square bracket notation?

For example,

trace(xml["categories.category.@name"].toString()); // cat1

or

trace(xml["categories.@name"]); // catList

Answer 1

Using the square bracket notation is unnecessary if you know the names of the nodes you’re accessing. This should work fine:

[e-mail]();

Square bracket notation is used to access properties with a string name. It is not specifically related to E4X. The translation of all properties to square bracket notation would be this:

xml['categories']['category']['@name']['toString']();