Flash CS3 Documentation

ActionScript 2.0 Language Reference > ActionScript classes > XML > ignoreWhite (XML.ignoreWhite property)

ignoreWhite (XML.ignoreWhite property)

Default setting is false. When set to true, text nodes that contain only white space are discarded during the parsing process. Text nodes with leading or trailing white space are unaffected.

Usage 1: You can set the ignoreWhite property for individual XML objects, as the following code shows:

my_xml.ignoreWhite = true;

Usage 2: You can set the default ignoreWhite property for XML objects, as the following code shows:

XML.prototype.ignoreWhite = true;

Availability: ActionScript 1.0; Flash Player 5

Example

The following example loads an XML file with a text node that contains only white space; the foyer tag comprises fourteen space characters. To run this example, create a text file named flooring.xml, and copy the following tags into it:

 <house>
 <kitchen> ceramic tile </kitchen>
 <bathroom>linoleum</bathroom>
 <foyer> </foyer>
 </house>

Create a new Flash document named flooring.fla and save it to the same directory as the XML file. Place the following code into the main Timeline:

// Create a new XML object.
var flooring:XML = new XML();

// Set the ignoreWhite property to true (default value is false)
flooring.ignoreWhite = true;

// After loading is complete, trace the XML object.
flooring.onLoad = function(success:Boolean) {
    trace(flooring);
}

// Load the XML into the flooring object.
flooring.load("flooring.xml");

// Output (line breaks added for clarity):
<house>
    <kitchen> ceramic tile </kitchen>
    <bathroom>linoleum</bathroom>
    <foyer />
</house>

If you then change the setting of flooring.ignoreWhite to false, or simply remove that line of code entirely, the fourteen space characters in the foyer tag will be preserved:

...
// Set the ignoreWhite property to false (default value).
flooring.ignoreWhite = false;
...
// Output (line breaks added for clarity):
<house>
    <kitchen> ceramic tile </kitchen>
    <bathroom>linoleum</bathroom>
    <foyer> </foyer>
</house>

For other examples, see the Flash Samples page at www.adobe.com/go/learn_fl_samples. Download and decompress the Samples zip file and go to the ActionScript2.0\XML_BlogTracker and ActionScript2.0\XML_LanguagePicker folders to access the XML_blogTracker.fla and XML_languagePicker.fla files.

Flash CS3