Pulling in children of children in XML

Question

Hey all-
Newbie to XML here and I have what I *hope* is an easy
problem, but I just don't know the answer. And as I have to try and
show this by Monday, I'm sort of stuck.
I am trying to pull in information about houses via an xml
file. Each house has 1 address, 1 owner, 1 description, and about 6
photos. I have no problem accessing the address, owner, etc, and I
can always access the first photo, but whenever I cycle through the
photos, I seem to cycle through the first photo for every house,
not every photo for each house.
Basically, I need the children <images> to go up by
one, without the the parent going up by 1. I am hoping I am
describing this well.
My code looks like this:
total = xmlNode.childNodes.length;
totalb =
xmlNode.childNodes[0].childNodes[5].childNodes.length;
totalc = (totalb-1);
for (i=0; i<total; i++) {
thumb
= xmlNode.childNodes.childNodes[0].firstChild.nodeValue;
address
= xmlNode.childNodes.childNodes[1].firstChild.nodeValue;
construct
= xmlNode.childNodes.childNodes[2].firstChild.nodeValue;
work
= xmlNode.childNodes.childNodes[3].firstChild.nodeValue;
description
= xmlNode.childNodes.childNodes[4].firstChild.nodeValue;
image
=
xmlNode.childNodes.childNodes[5].firstChild.firstChild.nodeValue;
where total = number of houses
and totalb = number of photos for that house.
This works fine - it is pulling in the accurate number of
both houses and photos.
My XML looks like this:
<projects>
<pic>
<thumb>boulevard_staircase1_thumb.jpg</thumb>
<address>Jim's Place</address>
<construct>July 28, 2006</construct>
<work>Framing, Electrical, Flooring,
Roofing</work>
<description>This is Jim's place</description>
<photos>
<image>jim1.jpg</image>
<image>jim2.jpg</image>
<image>jim3.jpg</image>
<image>4.jpg</image>
<image>jim5.jpg</image>
</photos>
</pic>
<pic>
<thumb>boulevard_staircase1_thumbb.jpg</thumb>
<address>Bob's Place</address>
<construct>January 20, 2006</construct>
<work>Bob's Stuff</work>
<description>Isn't Bob Great?</description>
<photos>
<image>bobs1.jpg</image>
<image>bobs2.jpg</image>
<image>bobs3.jpg</image>
<image>bobs4.jpg</image>
</photos>
</pic>
<image> is the tag I am having problem with.
THANKS a lot, and a frosty beer to whoever can help!
Noah

Answer 1

I suggest you load your XML nodes in to an Array for each
nodevalue
then you can cycle thru the array for each pic rather than
trying to extract each childnode value.
A simple way to do this is using XPath statements to load
Arrays
Try this
import mx.xpath.XPathAPI;
var projectxml:XML = new XML();
projectxml.ignoreWhite = true;
projectxml.onLoad = function(success:Boolean) {
trace("onload...");
if (success) {
trace("success...");
var thePath_str:String = "projects/pic/photos";
var pic_array:Array =
XPathAPI.selectNodeList(this.firstChild, thePath_str);
// then you can use a loop to step thru the images
for (var i:Number = 0; i < title_array.length; i++) {
trace(pic_array
.firstChild.nodeValue);
projectxml.load("project.xml");
You can extend this to load all your node values into arrays
then you can step thru the data far more easily.