Flash 5 and XML - Page 10

The Code

Let's look at the first couple of lines, which just set up stuff for us which we will need later on.

if(this.loaded) {
    content_feed_display = "Data loaded.";
}

Tell the user the data is loaded. They probably won't see the message, since it is happening so fast, but why not. Good for debugging purposes, anyway.

mainTag = new XML;
elementTag = new XML;
articleList = new Array;
elementList = new Array;

We set up a couple of internal XML documents (remember, a node within an XML document behaves just like a full XML document), and a couple of arrays for looping over data later.

mainTag = this.firstChild.nextSibling;

We get a handle on the xml data we want. The this refers to the original XML Object we created. Notice that we get the first child node by calling the firstChild property, but since this first child is the document definition, we get the next child node with the nextSibling property.

if(mainTag.nodeName.toLowerCase() == "moreovernews") {...}