Creating an XML string in Flex (AS3) by using DOM functions

Question

I want to create an XML string in Flex 3 in a similar way to you might approach it in Java. I only want a small piece of XML in the format

<slide thumb="http://www.thumbs.com/thumb.jpg" type="static" blah="bleh" />

The only type of code I can find for doing this seems ridiculous....

private function createXML(): void
{
var xm:XML = <Relyon></Relyon>;
var nodeName:String = “EMPLOYEENAME”;
var nodeValue:String = “KUMAR”;
var xmlList:XMLList = XMLList(”<”+nodeName+”>”+nodeValue+”</”+nodeName+”>”);
xm.appendChild(xmlList);
Alert.show(xm);
}

I would like to do something like...

var x:XMLNode = new XMLNode("slide");
x.setAttribute("thumb", thumbURL);
x.setAttribute("type", "static");

This is surely possible?

Answer 1

Stay away from XMLNode if you're using as3, it's a legacy class, the new XML and XMLList classes are the ones that support the excellent E4X. Using those it's as easy as this:

var myXML:XML = <slide />;
myXML.@thumb="http://www.thumbs.com/thumb.jpg";
myXML.@type="static";
myXML.@blah="bleh";
trace("myXML", myXML.toXMLString());

The @ means it's an attribute, not using that would add child nodes instead.

Answer 2

Also, if you are using a variable as the attribute name you can use

var _attName:String = "foo";
myXML.@[_attName] = "bar";

but you would need to read it back out as

myXML.@[_attname][0];