ItemRenderer and DataGrid Problem

Question

Hi guys.
I'm on creating a small app that simply pulls information
from an XML file, displays it in a DataGrid then allows the user to
filter and search it. First things first though; I'll explain what
I have so far then detail my problem.
I get the XML file via HTTPService then place the results in
a Bindable ArrayCollection. When the Datagrid's source is set to
that ArrayCollection it works fine. What I am initially trying to
do is use an itemRenderer in one of the columns that displays lines
of text depending on the values of the current row.
For example, the structure of my XML file is (roughly):
<content>
<name>Name1</name>
<description>Description Goes Here</description>
<audience1>yes</audience1>
<audience2>no</audience2>
<audience3>yes</audience3>
</content>
So what I am trying to do is group the audiences that each
piece of "content" has a yes value to. So under the "Audiences"
column in the datagrid, the above content would say
"Audience1
Audience3"
as it has a yes value in between audience 1 and 3. I've tried
writing very basic code within the itemRenderer whereby I override
the public function set data and do some checks there but it never
seems to work right. I've tried using Arrays within that to store
the current audiences but I clearly haven't got the right format
for that.
There must be a more efficient way of doing this. I'm fairly
new to both Flex and AS3 (been using AS2 quite a while now) but I
have a feeling there would be some way to store each row's audience
list in an array/object/model so I can refer to it later (I'm
intending to filter these results by audience type later so I think
I will HAVE to do it this way eventually). I've read quite a few
tutorials and guides but I honestly don't know where to look
anymore, none of them seem to cover this specific problem.
I hope this makes sense to you guys and any guidance you
could give me would be greatly appreciated.
Cheers

Answer 1

LabelFunction produces a display-only column.
To filter, you will need to use the underlying data.
Another solution to consider is to create a custom item
class. Loop over the xmllist and build instances of the class,
populating the properties from the xml.
have a property who's value is calculated based on the
audience properties values. Since it is a "real" data property in
each item, you can filter on it directly.
Tracy