Parsing xml returned by web service

Question

I am calling a web service from flash and the web service
returns xml. The xml gets urlencoded when it's put inside the soap
wrapping xml and I'm not sure how to get rid of the soap wrapping
and unencode the returned xml. Thanks.

Answer 1

Hi vtxr1300,
I'm not sure if you meant to say "urlencoding" because that
looks more
like this:
?title=This is a test title&description=This is a test
description of item 1
What you're looking at here is pure XML (with namespaces but
you can
ignore them for the most part...we know this is SOAP!).
Since you posted this in the ActionScript 3 forum, I'll
assume you'll
want AS3 code to deal with this. Luckily, AS 3 has made it
incredibly easy
to extract whetever you need out of this.
First, you just need to get this data into a standard XML
object is it's
not already. So..something like this:
//xString is your XML data...SOAP return data, string, or
whatever
var myXML:XML=new XML(xString.toString());
The XML object retains its nesting properties so that, for
example, to
access the first '<desc>' node, you must access
'<module>' before it,
'<modules>' before that, and so on. This is
accomplished using the "child"
method associated with the XML object which uses the node
name as a
parameter. For the '<desc>' node, for example, this
would look like:
myXML.child("Body").child("GetTrainingResponse").child("GetTrainingResult").child("traini ng").child("modules").child("modile").child("desc");
A bit lengthy, but it gets the job done. Typically I would
store s
reference to each of the resulting "child" calls. this has
two benefits and
uses: It's easier to organize and easier to read than one
long instruction,
and it allows you to parse through multiple nodes. Each
"child" call returns
an XMLList object, not necessarily a single node. If there
are multiple
sibling nodes with the same name, for example, calling the
"child" method
will return an XMLList with two object nodes, not just one.
An XMLList can
be used much like an array so you can simply loop through the
results to see
all of the nodes.
The notation for ActionScript 3 has changed a bit for node
attributes.
An attribute name is now referenced via an '@' symbol. For
example, to get
the 'xmlns' attribute of the '<GetTrainingResponse>'
node, you would use:
myXML.child("Body").child("GetTrainingResponse").@xmlns;
Finally, it's worthwhile noting that the XML container
obejct reference
has changed. In ActionScript 2.0, an XML object would point
to the XML
document. The "firstChild" property of the XML object would
point to the
first node ('<soap>' in this instance). In ActionScript
3.0, the XML object
point to the first node so that the first child of the object
in this
instance would be the '<soap:Body>' node.
As mentioned, you can usually ignore namespaces for objects
you're
familiar with. The "soap" namespace, for example, can be
assumed since we
know this is a SOAP response.
Hope this helps.
Regards,
Patrick Bay
BAY NEW MEDIA
"vtxr1300" <[email protected]> wrote in
message
news:[email protected]...
> Here's what the web service is returning. If I create a
local version of
> the
> xml without the soap wrapping and urlencoding I can get
all the data I
> need...
> I just can't figure out how to urldecode it and get rid
of the soap xml.
> Can
> anyone please offer some ideas? Thanks.
>
> <soap:Envelope xmlns:soap="
http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/"
> xmlns:xsi="
http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
> xmlns:xsd="
http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
> <soap:Body>
> <GetTrainingResponse xmlns="
http://www.trainingondemand.com/">
>
<GetTrainingResult><training><modules><module><title>Item
> 1</title><desc>This is a test description of
the
> item.</desc><purchaseurl>
http://www.yahoo.com</purchaseurl><imageurl>http://www.
>
testsite.com/header.gif</imageurl></module><module><title>Item
> 1</title><desc>This is a test description of
the
> item.</desc><purchaseurl>
http://www.yahoo.com</purchaseurl><imageurl>http://www.
>
testsite.com/header.gif</imageurl></module><module><title>Item
> 1</title><desc>This is a test description of
the
> item.</desc><purchaseurl>
http://www.yahoo.com</purchaseurl><imageurl>http://www.
>
testsite.com/header.gif</imageurl></module><module><title>Item
> 1</title><desc>This is a test description of
the
> item.</desc><purchaseurl>
http://www.yahoo.com</purchaseurl><imageurl>http://www.
>
testsite.com/header.gif</imageurl></module></modules><colors><darkcolor>8396b0</
>
darkcolor><btngradientstart>2d6dc4<btngradientstart><btngradientend>17498f<btngr
>
adientend><btn2gradientstart>a5b5ca</btn2gradientstart><btn2gradientend>c4d0e0</
>
btn2gradientend></colors></training></GetTrainingResult>
> </GetTrainingResponse>
> </soap:Body>
> </soap:Envelope>
>