User Guide

Initializing XML variables 319
Initializing XML variables
You can assign an XML literal to an XML object, as follows:
var myXML:XML =
<order>
<item id='1'>
<menuName>burger</menuName>
<price>3.95</price>
</item>
<item id='2'>
<menuName>fries</menuName>
<price>1.45</price>
</item>
</order>
As the following snippet shows, you can also use the new constructor to create an instance of
an XML object from a string that contains XML data:
var str:String = "<order><item id='1'><menuName>burger</menuName>"
+ "<price>3.95</price></item></order>";
var myXML:XML = new XML(str);
If the XML data in the string is not well formed (for example, if a closing tag is missing), you
will see a run-time error.
You can also pass data by reference (from other variables) into an XML object, as the
following example shows:
var tagname:String = "item";
var attributename:String = "id";
var attributevalue:String = “5”;
var content:String = "Chicken";
var x:XML = <{tagname} {attributename}={attributevalue}>{content}</
{tagname}>;
trace(x.toXMLString())
// Output: <item id="5">Chicken</item>
To load XML data from a URL, use the URLLoader class, as the following example shows:
import flash.events.Event;
import flash.net.URLLoader;
import flash.net.URLRequest;
var externalXML:XML;
var loader:URLLoader = new URLLoader();
var request:URLRequest = new URLRequest("xmlFile.xml");
loader.load(request);
loader.addEventListener(Event.COMPLETE, onComplete);
function onComplete(event:Event):void
{