Keith Hair

When I'm writing a script to read XML data, I personally like the identification of node names and attributes to be case-insensitive. Its one less thing to worry about when others are modifying the XML data that my script will have to read and render, and I think they feel modifying the XML to be more user-friendly this way.

Here, the example scripts pull a list of all the nodes with the name "MEDIA".
Using Regular Expressions, you can identify each "MEDIA" node regardless of its letter case.

 
var doc:XML=
<DATA>
	<CATEGORY>
		<MEDIA>A.jpg</MEDIA>
		<MEDIA>B.jpg</MEDIA>
	</CATEGORY>
	<CATEGORY>
		<MEDIA>C.jpg</MEDIA>
	</CATEGORY>
	<CATEGORY>
		<MEDIA>D.jpg</MEDIA>
	</CATEGORY>
	<CATEGORY>
		<MEDIA>E.jpg</MEDIA>
	</CATEGORY>
</DATA>;
 
var findName:String="media";
trace(doc..*.(new RegExp(findName,"i")["test"](name())).toXMLString());
 

"Error #1069: Property lowerCase not found on QName"

 
trace(doc..*.(name().lowerCase()=="media").toXMLString());
 

Letter case must be same for this to work.

 
trace(doc..*.(name()=="MEDIA").toXMLString());
 

Used a regular expression to do case-insensitive filter
Works, letter case does not matter...but the expression is too "hardcoded".

 
trace(doc..*.(/media/i.test(name())).toXMLString());
 

Works, but compiler does not like it:
"Warning: 3594: test is not a recognized method of the dynamic class RegExp."
This is an attempt to allow variables and expressions.

 
var findName:String="media";
trace(doc..*.(new RegExp(findName,"i").test(name())).toXMLString());
 

Works!
"[" and "]" keeps the compiler from warning when using the RegExp "test()" method.
Now letter case does not matter, and RegExp constructor allows variables or expressions.

 
var findName:String="media";
trace(doc..*.(new RegExp(findName,"i")["test"](name())).toXMLString());
 

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 1st, 2008 at 11:13 am and is filed under XML.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.