Parsing XML with ActionScript 3.0

Question

I have a XML which goes like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?>
<Root xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
    <Row>
        <ColumnA>2013-08-07</ColumnA>
        <ColumnB>Pizza</ColumnB>
    </Row>
    <Row>
        <ColumnA>2013-04-07</ColumnA>
        <ColumnB>Burger</ColumnB>
    </Row>
    <Row>
        <ColumnA>2013-04-07</ColumnA>
        <ColumnB>Pizza</ColumnB>
    </Row>

The XML goes on like this for hundreds of Rows. What I am trying to achieve is this. "Output: Pizza: 2 occurances on 2013-08-07 & 2013-04-07." So far this is what I've tried:

//Variables
var myXML:XML;
var xmlLoader:URLLoader = new URLLoader();

//Check that the XML is loaded
xmlLoader.load(new URLRequest ("myXML.xml"));
xmlLoader.addEventListener(Event.COMPLETE, processXML);
function processXML(e:Event):void {
    myXML = new XML(e.target.data);

    //Create a XMLList for Column A data

    var items:XMLList = myXML.Row.ColumnA.text()

    //Create a XMLList for Rows

    var rows:XMLList = myXML.Row

    //Create a XMLList for Column B data (Dates)
    var dates:XMLList = myXML.Row.ColumnB.text()

    //Create an empty object to fill in the occurances of Column A
    var columnA:String;
    var map:Object = {};
    for each (columnA in items)
    {
        if(!map[columnA])
            map[columnA] = 1;
        else 
            map[columnA]++;
    }


    for ( columnA in map ) 
    {
        trace(columnA, "=", map[columnA], "times. On dates ");
    }

}

My newbie attempt at trying to see if I can relate column B to column A

    var columnB:String;

    for ( var i:uint=0; i<rows.length(); i++ )
    {
        if ( columnA[i] == myXML.Row.ColumnA[i] )
        {
            trace( columnA[i], "=", columnB[i] )
        }
    }

It's puzzling me. Currently in output panel I get...

Pizza 2 times. On Dates 
Burger 1 times. On Dates
etc.

Is there a way to include the dates in the trace output? So I get something like:

Pizza 2 times. On Dates 2013-08-07, 2013-04-07

Kodiak · Accepted Answer · 2013-05-22 08:13:13Z

4

I wouldn't extract anything from the XML before parsing it:

var map:Object = {};
var meal:String;    
//loop through each row
for each (var node:XML in myXML.Row)
{
  meal = node.ColumnB.text();

  //if the meal does not exist as a key in our map yet, create it and put an empty array in it
  if (!map[meal])
    map[meal] = [];

  //fill the array of dates with the current date
  map[meal].push(node.ColumnA.text());
}

There you get an object filled like that:

{Pizza: ["2013-08-07", "2013-04-07"], Burger: ["2013-04-07"]}

You just have to go through it:

for (var meal:String in map)
{
  trace(meal, "found", map[meal].length, "times on", map[meal]);
}

edited May 22, 2013 at 8:13

answered May 21, 2013 at 9:58

Kodiak

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4 Comments

rohan Over a year ago

Thankyou Kodiak! I am a beginner and I would be very delighted if you could add comments explaining each line of code.

rohan Over a year ago

It traces "Pizza found 1 times on 2013-08-07 Pizza found 1 times on 2013-04-07 Burger found 1 times on 2013-04-07" How can I make it count total occurances in all dates. For example: "Pizza: 2 occurances. Dates: 2013-08-07, 2013-04-07"

Kodiak Over a year ago

I copied exactly the code above and got Burger found 1 times on 2013-04-07 Pizza found 2 times on 2013-08-07,2013-04-07

rohan Over a year ago

Thankyou! :) also for including comments

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