Displaying photos from an XML file

Question

Here's my next little challenge: have to build an app that
shows a bunch of photos (listed in an XML file) based upon certain
criteria in the XML data. First view will show ALL the photos, and
then the user will whittle down the choices/photos based upon
criteria they select via check boxes.
I'm sure I can now figure out how to pull the XML data into
the application. I'll have to build a listener for the check box
component(s), which shouldn't be difficult. The onClick event would
then have to search through the XML/array and show only the
user-selected data. It would be good also if the pictures were
actually pulled from the server's hard drive rather than having
them stored in the Flash file. That would allow the site's owner to
easily add images by simply copying them to the server and adding
data to the XML. Is that do-able, and if so, can anyone put me on
the right path (theorhetically) to developing it?
The other question I have at this pre-planning stage is this:
ALL the pix are certainly not going to fit on the stage at one
time. I am going to have to have a finite number of pix, say six,
visible on the stage, and then allow the user to filter through the
as-yet-unseen images by clicking on a number (Page 2 of 7), or
something along those lines.
Before I get too deep into the project, can anyone give me
some theory on how something like that might be accomplished? I'm
trying to kinda map this one out in my head prior to getting knee
deep in code.
Thanks!

Answer 1

Hey Nick,
For the pulling the pics from the server part, just have the
XML reside on the server along with the images and point your flash
app to
http://servername/mypics.xml
The XML can contain relative links to the pictures
<myxml>
<pic>
<location>/images/mypic.jpg</location>
<description>fancy house</description>
<etc...></...etc>
</pic>
</myxml>
As for the determining how many pages of pics you have,
once you load the XML into and XMLList object (you've done
this before), you can search through, get the number of pics, etc.
So you'll have to build your app like:
var pageCount = 1;
for(var i=0;i<myXML.pic.length;i++){
if(i%6==0){
pageCount++;
Hope that helps!
Cheers,
FlashTastic