ADOBE DIRECTOR 11.0
User Guide
403
An XML document is
well formed
if it has a coherent nesting structure and no misplaced angle brackets. Some XML
documents can be associated with a
document type declaration
(DTD) file that describes specific rules for the XML
tags the document uses. The XML Parser Xtra checks that the XML follows the general rules of creating and using
XML tags to ensure that the document is well formed. However, the Xtra does not check the DTD file to ensure that
the tags follow the specific rules described by the DTD. For this reason, the Xtra is called nonvalidating. The creator
of the original XML document must follow the rules described in the DTD. Your Director movie should also include
script that checks for errors in the use of the XML document’s tags.
To use the XML Parser Xtra, create a parser object by using Lingo or JavaScript syntax to assign a new instance of
the Xtra to a variable. This variable now contains the parser object. Use a global variable if you need to access the
XML data from anywhere in the Director movie.
global gParserObject
gParserObject = new(xtra "xmlparser")
The next step is to parse the XML data, using the
parseString()
method. The data can come from the text of a cast
member or a string variable. To parse XML from a URL, use
parseURL()
instead.
ParseString()
and
parseURL()
return either
VOID
, which indicates that the method is successful, or an error code that indicates a problem with the
XML data.
The following script statement sets the variable
errCode
to the return value of the
parseString()
method:
errCode = gParserObject.parseString(member("XMLtext").text)
After the XML Parser Xtra parses the data, the parser object contains all the data from the XML document.
The XML data can be considered a tree structure because most documents have tags nested within other tags, with
each tag being like a branch of the tree.
The following example shows a short XML document:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<e1><tagName attr1="val1" attr2="val2"/><e2>element 2</e2><e3>element 3</e3></e1>
The following example is the same XML with its tree structure shown more clearly:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<e1>
<tagName attr1="val1" attr2="val2"/>
<e2>element 2</e2>
<e3>element 3</e3>
</e1>
There are two ways to access a parsed XML document. You can use the
makeList()
method to convert the
document into a nested property list and use the list-access methods of Lingo or JavaScript syntax, or you can use
the special script methods of the XML Parser Xtra to access the parsed data directly.
The following script statement uses the
makeList()
method to convert the parsed data to a nested property list that
reflects the tree structure of the XML:
theList = gParserObject.makeList()
Each element in the document is represented by its own property list, with another property list for each child
element that it contains.
•
The name of the element is the property name, and the content of the element is the property value.
•
Attributes of an element are stored in a child list with the name !ATTRIBUTES. The property list of attributes
contains the name of each attribute and its value.
