hyperlinks in xml data?

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10-10-2003, 02:11 PM
bytemonster

hyperlinks in xml data?

I'm importing some xml data to a site and have a node attribute with an "a href" tag but it seems to stop the flow of the xml data.

Simple html tags can be put in xml data, yes?
10-12-2003, 12:50 AM
bytemonster

Somebody? The only way I can seem to import a link from xml to flash is to encode each greater-than, less-than, and quote symbol to the html equivalent. Isn't there a better way to do this? I have a url embedded in a node attribute.
10-12-2003, 08:10 AM
aden_1

Good question mate!
same as mine!

Im trying to get a link on each seperate image,
that im importing with xml...

each pic would be a different link...
I need to have to links working straight from the xml
so its easily editable for large amounts of info/pics.

Anyone help?
10-12-2003, 01:08 PM
bytemonster

c'mon...where are the xml gurus around here?
10-12-2003, 09:17 PM
tupps

Sorry, not an XML guru, but I did spend the weekend sailing and riding (road bike), so unfortunately I didn't have much time to answer your XML questions.

Simple html tags should be fine. However they must follow the XML standards, so very old html might have:

PHP Code:

<a href=blahblahblah>Link</a>

Which should be:

PHP Code:

<a href='blahblahblah'>Link</a>

The quotes make it legal xml. Seeing you will probably have more questions about the XML & HTML I have a example of converting XML to HTML that can be displayed in an text box:

http://tupps.com/flash/examples/load.../demoText.html

Thanks

Luke
10-12-2003, 10:17 PM
aden_1

Thanks Tupps,

Where about in melbourne are you from?
Im from sydney!

Anyway,

I understand how the ( a href is meant to be .etc )
But my problem lays with how it fits into my XML...
with out stuffing up how it also loads my images into the flash.

I need to get the images in and scrolling,
and have each image as a link its self,
and the link has to come from the XML.

here is the XML i have used now, and the FLA incase you need to put in some actionscript to create a get URL type thing, for each image.

Thanks heaps mate!

Aden
10-12-2003, 10:25 PM
aden_1

SO basically,

When a pic on the scroller is clicked,
I want it to load the url of a page,
where the pic's link, is determined by code
in the XML doccument, in the same tag as the actual image.

Making sence?

Ive seriously got no idea how to make this happen!
grrrrrr

Thanks heaps tupps.
10-13-2003, 10:30 PM
aden_1

anyone?
10-16-2003, 04:46 PM
alexmoloney750

i'm looking for a way to do this as well for my web portfolio so when thumbnail pic of a website i've done shows - the user can click on it (or some text) that will link them to that particular site

anyone have a solution?

cheers
alex
10-16-2003, 07:12 PM
bytemonster

I'm still not getting an answer to my question.

Let's say my xml doc is:

<?xml version="1.0" standalone="no" ?>
<FILMOGRAPHY>
 <FILM
  title="<a href='ref/lotr-tt_ref.html' target='_blank'>Dirty Dancing</a>"
  client="Artisan"
  project="Mixing and Mastering in 5.1, 6.1 and 2.0"
/>
</FILMOGRAPHY>

That doesn't seem to work unless I encode the symbols like this:

  title="&lt;a href=&quot;ref/lotr-tt_ref.html&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Dirty Dancing&lt;/a&gt;"

Also, am I limited to 128 characters in an attribute?

The whole point is, I'm trying to make it more easily updatable for the client, who knows very basic html

Am I going to have to convert the attributes into nodes in order to add links or use more than 128 characters?

Where are the xml gurus on this?
10-16-2003, 07:31 PM
aden_1

Its cool guys!

Some one will help us out soon!
Tupps is a genious, so im sure he will help us out when he gets a chance!!

Or some other good citizen of flash kit!!

thanks,

Aden!
10-16-2003, 07:36 PM
aden_1

It think some how ive got to make each image a link, in which then finds the xml and reads the <a href="dfkjhdfjd"></a>
so when the images is clicked, it loads its appropriate page!
different to every other image's link!

i still cant get anyhitng to work!
if anyone is helping...

View my attatchent a few posts up!

thanks
10-17-2003, 01:06 AM
bodoni

i've also been stuck on this for a while and i'm just really, really frustrated. if xml is so great, why is something like a simple unidirectional link so bloody difficult??

luke, i've looked at your example, looked at the xml doc and the .fla, and i guess that i'm just not advanced enough in xml to make this work.

basically my question is: what do i have to do to my actionscript to make the xml display correctly?

here's a concrete example: i have a series of images that load at runtime. to the right of the images i have descriptions; underneath, i have copyright information and want to be able to link to the photographers' sites. so my xml doc looks like

PHP Code:

<?xml version = "1.0"?> <Images> <ImageNode jpegURL="images/misc_01.jpg" copyright="photo © Martin Parr">This is a photo of whatever.</ImageNode> . . . </Images>

and in my .fla i have

Code:

miscXML = new XML(); miscXML.onLoad = displayImages; miscXML.load("misc.xml"); miscXML.ignoreWhite = true; function displayImages(success) { if (success == true) { rootNode = miscXML.firstChild; totalImages = rootNode.childNodes.length; firstImageNode = rootNode.firstChild; currentImageNode = firstImageNode; currentIndex = 1; updateImage(firstImageNode); } } //you probably don't need to know the following, but i'll include it just in case... function updateImage(newImageNode) { imagePath = newImageNode.attributes.jpegURL; copyright = newImageNode.attributes.copyright; caption = newImageNode.firstChild.nodeValue; loadMovie(imagePath, targetClip); } next_btn.onRelease = function() { nextImageNode = currentImageNode.nextSibling; if (nextImageNode == null) { break; } else { currentIndex++; updateImage(nextImageNode); currentImageNode = nextImageNode; } }; back_btn.onRelease = function() { previousImageNode = currentImageNode.previousSibling; if (previousImageNode == null) { break; } else { currentIndex--; currentImageNode = previousImageNode; updateImage(previousImageNode); } };

i have tried all sorts of things and can't get anything to work. please, please help!
10-17-2003, 02:43 AM
tupps

OK, seeing there are so many questions in this thread, I will answer them with individual posts.

For ByteMonster, it is not legal to have XML tags in your attributes. Two options are available, one you have already discovered which is to URL encode all the text.

The other would be to move the attributes into nodes (if you wanted a 'proper' way that XML purists would believe in).

eg:

PHP Code:

<FILM client="Artisan" project="Mixing and Mastering in 5.1, 6.1 and 2.0"> <TITLE><a href='ref/lotr-tt_ref.html' target='_blank'>Dirty Dancing</a></TITLE> </FILM>

Thanks

Luke
10-17-2003, 02:52 AM
tupps

Bodoni,

With your problem, I am guessing that you are not getting the node you think you are getting as the first node.

As a starting point I would place a trace statement in the updateImage function, tracing the newImageNode

trace(newImageNode)

This should print out the node that you are receiving and you can verify that your input data is correct.

If that is correct I would then check to make sure all your variables read from attributes are being set (trace statements again).

If all of that doesn't work I would need to see your flash file.

Thanks

Luke
10-17-2003, 03:21 AM
bodoni

wow, luke, thanks for responding so quickly and specifically.

it's going to take me a few minutes to digest and then try your suggestions.

a couple of thoughts occur to me: (a) the xml code/actionscript that i posted currently works just fine. (sorry if i wasn't clear.) it does what i want it to do. however it fails to work when i try to insert an anchor tag. part of the problem may have been that, as you can see, i set up "copyright" as an attribute, and then tried to use the link within the attribute. if i read your response to bytemonster correctly, that's not a legal move. but i also tried to use the anchor tag within the imageNode, and that didn't work either.

(b) is there any sort of hard and fast rule that makes sense and that i could read somewhere that would say: "here's how to insert a simple unidirectional link into an xml document" and "here's how to set it up in your .fla so that it will work."

how difficult can this be? well very, i guess.

:confused:
10-17-2003, 03:13 PM
bytemonster

That's what I thought, tupps, but for some reason, I get the FONT tag workng but not the A HREF tag. Also, any info after this line is cut off.

PHP Code:

<FILM> <TITLE><font color="#0000FF"><a_href="ref/lotr-tt_ref.html"_target="_blank">About Schmidt</a></font></TITLE> <CLIENT>New Line Cinema</CLIENT> <PROJECT>Mixing and Mastering in 5.1 & 2.0</PROJECT> </FILM> <FILM>

Am I doing something wrong? Do I have to add something to my code?
10-19-2003, 10:54 PM
tupps

ByteMonster:

Is there any reason that there is an underscore in your < a href tag? Also in front of target as well?

Thanks

Luke
10-19-2003, 10:59 PM
tupps

Bodoni

For hard and fast rules:

1) Anything in attributes must be either straight text, or you could urlencode the text and use that. Flash has a escape and a unescape function that will handle urlencoded text.

2) In a node there are two ways to add HTML. One is to use a CDATA tag, which the XML parser will basically ignore and give you in its entirity. Otherwise you have to make sure that everything is valid XML.

Thanks

Luke
10-20-2003, 12:34 AM
bytemonster

thanks tupps...that was a screwup...it's working now...except for that pesky 128 character problem.
10-20-2003, 03:51 PM
alexmoloney750

solution?

did u find a solution bytemonster ???

cheers
alex
10-20-2003, 09:00 PM
bytemonster

ok, here's what I did. All the xml info is in nodes, including the url. I could never get more than 128 characters out of the html href link in the xml, so I put a button over the text box, imported the url as a variable into the getURL function and it worked fine with some tweeking. You can see the temporary results at http://micasa.bytemonster.com. I'm still working on the sections.
10-21-2003, 02:10 AM
XMLEvangelist
Hi all,

In regards to the 128 character limit on links, there is a reasonably simple workaround.

In your XML, you will need to store your links seperately, and give each one a unique ID, eg:

PHP Code:

<FILM> <LINKS> <LINK id="link1" href="http://weblogs.asp.net/TWalters/?bigString=0123456789 0123456789 0123456789 0123456789 0123456789 0123456789 0123456789 0123456789 0123456789 0123456789 0123456789 0123456789 0123456789" target="_blank" /> </LINKS> <TITLE> <font color="#0000FF"> <a href="asfunction:openLink,link1">About Schmidt</a> </font> </TITLE> <CLIENT>New Line Cinema</CLIENT> <PROJECT>Mixing and Mastering in 5.1 & 2.0</PROJECT> </FILM>

Now, when you render this it will look fine, but the link won't do anything, so you need to add this magic little function to your code:
code:
```
function openLink( linkID )

{

  // assuming the XML document is 'xmlFilms'

  var xmlLinkNode = xmlFilms[ linkID ];

  getURL( xmlLinkNode.attributes.href, xmlLinkNode.attributes.target );

}
```
This works because the getURL method isn't limited by the 128 character restriction.

Let me know if you have any troubles getting this to work.

Hope this helps!
10-21-2003, 03:23 AM
bytemonster

Thanks I'll give that a try and let you know how it goes.
10-21-2003, 10:50 AM
alexmoloney750

could you put the fla/xml files online so i can look at the code as i want to use this for my portfolio section?

thanks
a
10-25-2003, 10:50 AM
Mikaq

okay.... I have read this thread and tried to make links working with plain xml, but in vain.

My code goes like this:

PHP Code:

<Lista> <DVD> <Ostovuosi>2003</Ostovuosi> <Genre>Toiminta</Genre> <Nimi>Testi</Nimi> <Region>R2</Region> <Arvostelu></Arvostelu> </DVD> </Lista>

Now that last element Arvostelu. I would like to include link and image on that and by clicking that image it would open review-site of that DVD.

Now I have tried for example this to make even that link working:

PHP Code:

<Arvostelu><a href="http://whateverdvd.com">DVD</a></Arvostelu> also this <Arvostelu href="http://whateverdvd.com">DVD</Arvostelu>

Nothing happens... I can't see DVD-text on that Arvostelu column.

My old design can be seen in here: DVD-list

If you view source, you can see how "messy" it is... so it would be far more easier to update my dvd-list by using xml.

any ideas how to get links working and that little review image?

Thank for advance