Problem with Flash 8 carousel and XML

galahad3 · April 9th, 2008, 12:12 PM

I made some progress with a basic spinning carousel of items (which works a treat using just shapes created within Flash 8) but seem to have hit a few issues when stepping up to grabbing images via an external XML file- I'll try and explain the problem...

Each of the carousel items needs to grab a different file (at present I'm trying to test with images but in time these will be FLV video files).

The carousel is based on the ones demo'd at www.gotoandlearn.com. I followed the second of the tutorials and have got to the point where I've created a movie clip inside a movie clip inside a movie clip (required for the carousel) and have the accompanying ActionScript working, however when I preview the SWF file I only see the "filler shape" of the innermost movie clip, not the image file (.png) that it's supposed to contain.
The three movie clips are called item (the outermost), icon (inside item) and inner (the innermost). The outermost one ("item") is the one set to "export to ActionScript".

The images are grabbed from an XML file.

The ActionScript is as follows:

Code:

var numOfItems:Number; //don't declare yet as number of items will be read from XML 
var radiusX:Number = 250; 
var radiusY:Number = 75; 
var centerX:Number = Stage.width/2; 
var centerY:Number = Stage.height/2; 
var speed:Number = 0.05; 
var perspective:Number = 130; //skew the perspective so items further back are smaller 
var home:MovieClip = this; //create variable to be used inside the XML for loop later as we can't use "this" inside that loop 
var xml:XML = new XML(); 
xml.ignoreWhite = true; 
xml.onLoad = function() 
{ 
var nodes = this.firstChild.childNodes; //i.e the XML file hierarchy 
numOfItems = nodes.length; 
for (var i=0;i<numOfItems;i++) 
{ 
var t = home.attachMovie("item","item"+i,i+1); 
t.angle = i * ((Math.PI*2)/numOfItems); 
t.onEnterFrame = mover; 
t.icon.inner.loadMovie (nodes[i].attributes.image); //load the image files 
} 
} 
for (var i=0;i<numOfItems;i++) 
{ 
var t = this.attachMovie("item","item"+i,i+1); 
t.angle = i * ((Math.PI*2)/numOfItems); 
t.onEnterFrame = mover; 
} 
xml.load("icons.xml"); 
function mover () 
{ 
this._x = Math.cos(this.angle) * radiusX + centerX; 
this._y = Math.sin(this.angle) * radiusY + centerY; 
var s:Number = (this._y - perspective)/(centerY + radiusY - perspective); //add the new perspective variable to the calculation 
this._xscale = this._yscale = s * 100; 
this.angle += this._parent.speed; 
this.swapDepths(Math.round(this._xscale)+100); 
} 
this.onMouseMove = function() 
{ 
speed = (this._xmouse-centerX)/2000; 
} 
The XML file: 
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1"?> 
<icons> 
<icon image="icon1.png" /> 
<icon image="icon2.png" /> 
</icons>

The XML file seems to be read (to a degree) by the ActionScript, because if I had a new "icon" item, the carousel "grows" another item accordingly (although as before, it only displays the background shape of the image "placeholder" movie clip).

Amyone got any ideas?