Downloading and parsing XML during preload

Question

Apologies if this topic has already been covered but the
search function on the forums doesn't appear to be working for me.
My problem is this. I have a flex app that needs to download
a couple of xml files during initialization that are approximately
2-3 MB each. I'd like for the progress bar to continue showing
until the files are downloaded and parsed and only after the files
are downloaded and parsed, would the components start to be
rendered since some of them will require the files to determine
their look and feel.
Any ideas or places I should look to in order to figure this
out?
Thanks
Sang

Answer 1

Greg_B,
You could try and access the XML file via a file:// URI rather than an http:// one - this would not need the server to be started in order to get the xml/dtd loaded. You know the relative path to the dtd and xml files, and you can create a File object from there, so you can parse the xml file that way if you like.
Here's some code to help:
String filename = getServletContext().getRealPath("myXML.xml");
You can then pass the filename string as a parameter to the XML (I'm assuming you're using DOM but if you aren't I think you'll still get my point) parse method.
You can do all of this in the servlet's init() method, so it'll do that before it all loads up.
Hope it helps
Daniel