A bit too much repeating :)

Question

I haven't touched Spry in a bit over a year, and I'm having to go back a relearn a lot (and I usually only use this sort of thing on personal projects) -- so I am w-a-a-a-y out of my depth here.
I have an xml file:
     <Library>
         <Project>
               <Name>
                    <Items>
                         <Item>
                              <Detail>
                              <Detail>
                         </Item>
                         <Item>
          <Project>
I constructed a page that I was fairly proud of that displayed all of the data quite nicely for a single project.  So then I added several more projects to the xml file and, for items that repeated within a project and that I was displaying with a "spry:repeat", I started getting all of them in the file showing up within the individual Project.
I actually can see, I think , how to solve this dynamically, but if I just want to display each project, more or less as a flat listing of the contents of the XML file (mostly to just prove to myself that I understand what is happening at this level before I try something some complex) what do I need to be doing?  I've been reading the xpath summary over at w3schools, and have been reading the spry documentation concerning datasets but don't seem to have found (or understood?) what I am looking for that would explain to me what I am doing/doing wrong.  I thought I was onto something about nested xml datasets and the example of cakes and their toppings, but I couldn't get that to work--and noticed that the SpryNestedXMLDataSet.js wasn't even included with the Dreamweaver includes, although it was in the total package when I downloaded that.
I want to keep reading the documentation, because that is the way I learn this sort of thing best, but could someone please give me a few hints so that I know that I am at reading in the right place?
Thanks!

Answer 1

Hi,
Sounds like Spry nested datasets is exactly what you need.  I have a photos page that shows photos from multiple club events with each event having multiple photos.  Sounds like a match for your multiple items within project
The page is here http://www.thehmc.co.uk/photos.asp and the xml source is here http://www.thehmc.co.uk/
xml/ImgPhotos.xml .
Within my XML consider collection equivalent to your project node and ImgPhotos equivalent of your item node.
You need to include the Spry nested dataset javascript file as well as the SpryData javascript file.
<script src="SpryAssets/SpryData.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script src="SpryAssets/SpryNestedXMLDataSet.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
The Spry datasets are defined via
var Galleries = new Spry.Data.XMLDataSet("xml/ImgPhotos.xml", "imgGallery/Collection",{sortOnLoad:"PubDate",sortOrderOnLoad:"descending"});
Galleries.setColumnType("PubDate", "number");
var Photos = new Spry.Data.NestedXMLDataSet(Galleries, "ImgPhotos");
Then you defined the regions as below
<div class="SpryHiddenRegion" spry:region="Galleries Photos" >
        <div spry:repeat="Galleries">
              <div class="photoTitles">
              <h2>{Title}</h2>
              <p> {Description} <a href="{Link}" target="_blank" spry:if="'{Link}' != ''">MORE..</a></p>
              </div>
               <ul class="Gallery">
                   <li spry:repeat="Photos">
                     <a href="ePhotos.asp?imgUrl={Photos::imgUrl}&amp;imgAlt={Photos::imgAlt}" target="_blank"  ><img src="{Photos::imgUrl}" alt="{Photos::imgAlt}" /></a>{Photos::imgAlt}</li></ul>
       </div>
      </div>  
Hope this helps
Regards
Phil