Retrieve Data From XML File
| Category | : Flash | Views | : 27721 | ||
| Version | : 8 | Rating | : | ||
| Type | : Text | Source File | : retrieve-data-from-xml-file.zip | ||
| Result | : See the result | ||||
XML files are a great option to customization in flash; you can simply create a XML and tell your movie to load variables from it.
Let's say you want to create a movie that randomly loads one of three images. But you think that later you may want to add more images or change their path, so you need a XML file.
That's what we are going to do is this tutorial.
First create the xml file:
<xml>
<images>
<a title = "pic1.jpg" />
<b title = "pic2.jpg" />
<c title = "pic3.jpg" />
</images>
</xml>
You can add many more child nodes to <images> as long as you have those images inside the folder.Save the xml as "images.xml" and create a button in your project.
Give it the instance name of "ranImage" and open the actions for the first frame.
Paste this code:
var images = new XML();
images.ignoreWhite = true;
images.load("images.xml");
ranImage.onRelease = function()
{
var images_paths = _root.images.firstChild.firstChild.childNodes;
var ran = Math.round(Math.random() * (images_paths.length - 1));
_root.createEmptyMovieClip("holder", 1);
loadMovie(images_paths[ran].attributes.title, "holder");
_root.holder._xscale = 50;
_root.holder._yscale = 50;
}
//Here we declare a new XML object
var images = new XML()
//Sometimes white spaces in a xml file can cause problems so we tell our XML object to ignore them
images.ignoreWhite = true;
//load() function, loads our .xml
images.load("images.xml");
Here we declare a variable that corresponds to the child nodes of the <images> node in the xml file.
var images_paths = _root.images.firstChild.firstChild.childNodes;
Now we get a random number between 0 and the length of the images_paths array minus 1.
var ran = Math.round(Math.random() * (images_paths.length - 1))
Create a holder Movie Clip.
_root.createEmptyMovieClip("holder", 1);
Load the image.
loadMovie(images_paths[ran].attributes.title, "holder");
Title is an attribute of this node, so we need to call it like this inside our code:
(node).attributes.title
Scale the image.
_root.holder._xscale = 50;
_root.holder._yscale = 50;
Try to add more images to the xml; you will notice that they will work exactly as they should.
This could also be very useful to create dynamic slideshows.
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