User Guide

324 Working with XML

Accessing attributes

Use the @ symbol (the attribute identifier operator) to access attributes in an XML or

XMLList object, as shown in the following code:

var employee:XML =

</employee>;

trace(employee.@id); // 6401

You can use the * wildcard symbol with the @ symbol to access all attributes of an XML or

XMLList object, as in the following code:

var employee:XML =

</employee>;

trace(employee.@*.toXMLString());

// 6401

// 233

You can use the attribute() or attributes() method to access a specific attribute or all

attributes of an XML or XMLList object, as in the following code:

var employee:XML =

</employee>;

trace(employee.attribute("id")); // 6401

trace(employee.attribute("*").toXMLString());

// 6401

// 233

trace(employee.attributes().toXMLString());

// 6401

// 233

Note that you can also use the following syntax to access attributes, as the following example

shows:

employee.attribute("id")

employee["@id"]

employee.@["id"]

These are each equivalent to employee.@id. However, the syntax employee.@id is the

preferred approach.