Making a "search" box...

Question

Okay, let's say I have an XML file like this:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1"?>
<pages>
<page url="01.swf" search="one" />
<page url="02.swf" search="two,2" />
<page url="03.swf" search="three,3,tres" />
</pages>
Then, in Flash, I have loaded the XML file into a "navXML"
variable, thereby "two,2" would be the value of
"navXML.firstChild.childNodes[1].attributes.search", for example...
Making sense so far? - good!...
I want to make a search box. Basically a text entry box (say,
"search_txt") that when a MC is pressed (say, "search_mc"), it will
take the text in the search box and check to see if that text falls
into any of the "search" attributes of that XML file....
I know this would involve a "for" loop, and I'm sure I'd have
to first somehow parse the data in the "search" attributes by a ","
(since some of the "search" attributes have more than one value),
and maybe put them into an Array or something?...
I dunno - I know that this is a lot of questions at once, but
I just wanted to give out my whole scenario so that hopefully
someone could give me some idea of how to get started. Like, if my
thinking is correct (above), then I suppose my first question would
be how to get the "search" data paresed out by the "," and into
Arrays?...
(or, maybe I'm WAY off base, and someone has made a better
version of this that they can share!)
Thanks!...

Answer 1

"TimSymons" <[email protected]> wrote in
message
news:[email protected]...
>I did not test this but you could start with something
like this and
>probably
> optimize it for speed.
>
>
>
> Tim
>
>
>
>
> // search_txt, search_mc already exist on timeline
> //
> // assume also that the following XML data was
read/parsed into the navXML
> variable:
> /*
> <?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1"?>
> <pages>
> <page url="01.swf" search="one" />
> <page url="02.swf" search="two,2" />
> <page url="03.swf" search="three,3,tres" />
> </pages>
> */
>
> search_mc.onRelease = searchXML;
>
> function searchXML():XMLNode {
> var searchStr:String = search_txt.text.toLowerCase();
> var i:Number;
> var j:Number;
> var nodeIndex:Number;
>
> for (i=0; i<navXML.firstChild.childNodes.length; i++)
> var searchArr:Array = new Array();
> searchArr =
> String(navXML.firstChild.childNodes
.attributes.search).split(",");
> for (j=0; j<searchArr.length; j++) {
> if (searchStr == searchArr[j].toLowerCase()) {
> nodeIndex = i;
> break;
> }
> }
> if (nodeIndex != undefined) {
> break;
> }
> }
>
> return navXML.firstChild.childNodes[nodeIndex];
> }
>
Couple things here. I am not sure what you are returning to?
search_mc is
a MovieClip, so you are returning a Node to the onRelease?
Think that may
be a typo.
As far as speed... couple things. I am not sure about
actionscript and its
lookup times for executions like this... but, first things
first.
You actually don't need to break up the string into other
words. Thanks to
the indexOf method of the String Class. You can just do a
test
if (yoursearchValue.indexOf(searchWord) > -1) {
found it
I also think you may be better served parsing your XML into a
native Flash
Datatype like an Array of Object like this:
myFinisedObject = [{url:"01.swf", keywords:"one"},
{url:"02.swf",
keywords:"two,2"}]
To build that Array you could do the loop like listed in the
previous reply.
Then when you do your search you would just loop this array
of objects
checking for the indexOf on the keywords property.
I also think it depends on how much data you are going to be
handling here.
The parsing into the myFinisedObject gets better the more
stuff you give it
I think (again I am not sure how fast it is in comparison -
but if you try
it, let me know)