Sort Xml list

Question

Hello,
I am trying to learn actionscript 3 for work and have a very
specific project I need it for. I have been searching every
available tutorial have bought a few books to read but I cannot
find out how to do a few simple things.
The main thing I need to do right now is sort an xml list by
the date of an event before I start picking which nodes to display.
(<dt_event_start>) I need the function to be able to sort by
date or by alpha for a different xml list I will be sorting later,
not both at the same time, just one or the other. My code is sparse
right now, all it does is pick events in a certain city and write
them all in one big list to a text box on screen. Later I will have
to separate out each part to make a header for each event and
choose which nodes to display, so i need to sort the xml list
before I start displaying the nodes in separate text boxes within a
larger container repeated with a loop through the list.
included is one xml entry and the as3 code i have so far
Any help would be greatly appreciated and then I can go
looking for the other code I need.

Answer 1

This thread was "imported" from the old forums -- most, if not all, code seems to have disappeared. But here are the sort functions I posted:
function sortXML(source:XML, elementName:Object, fieldName:Object,
options:Object = null):XML
     // list of elements we're going to sort
     var list:XMLList=source.elements("*").(name()==elementName);
     // list of elements not included in the sort -
     // we place these back into the source node at the end
     var excludeList:XMLList=source.elements("*").(name()!=elementName);
     list= sortXMLList(list,fieldName,options);
     list += excludeList;
     source.setChildren(list);
     return source;
function sortXMLList(list:XMLList, fieldName:Object, options:Object =
null):XMLList
     var arr:Array = new Array();
     var ch:XML;
     for each(ch in list)
           arr.push(ch);
     var resultArr:Array = fieldName==null ?
           options==null ? arr.sort() :arr.sort(options)
           : arr.sortOn(fieldName, options);
     var result:XMLList = new XMLList();
     for(var i:int=0; i<resultArr.length; i++)
           result += resultArr[i];
     return result;