Loading multiple XML documents

SlideShowPro for Flash allows you to load more than one XML document for your gallery. Each file is loaded, and grouped together as a single gallery of content. You may load XML files you coded by hand, albums/galleries from SlideShowPro Director, or Media RSS feeds. And you can mix different XML file types together. This walkthrough will show you how.

Step One: Create an OPML document

OPML stands for "Outline Processor Markup Language" and is a standard way of bundling one or more XML documents. It's essentially an XML file that acts as a container for all your XML files. To create one, open your favorite ASCII/HTML text editor, and enter the following:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<opml version="1.1">
   <head>
      <title>My gallery</title>
   </head>
   <body>
      <outline type="" xmlUrl="" />
   </body>
</opml>

Your single outline node contains two attributes: type and xmlURL. The latter is an absolute URL to the XML document, while the former dictates the type of XML file the latter contains.

Options for type include rss, xml, and director.

rss should be used when assigning Media RSS feeds, xml should be used when assigning XML files you�ve manually coded, and director should be used when assigning XML File Paths to albums copied from SlideShowPro Director.

For example, here are outline elements containing a regular XML file, a Media RSS feed from Flickr, and an album from SlideShowPro Director:

<outline type="rss" 
   xmlUrl="http://api.flickr.com/services/feeds/groups_discuss.gne?
                id=36521980043@N01&format=rss_200" />
<outline type="xml" xmlUrl="http://mydomain.com/images.xml" />
<outline type="director" xmlUrl="http://mydomain.com/slideshowpro/images.php?album=1" />

Step Two: Save the OPML document

When complete, save your OPML file to the folder where you�re publishing your SWF containing SlideShowPro for Flash. For the purposes of this walkthrough, we'll name it "opml.xml".

Step Three: Assign OPML document

Open Flash, and add an instance of SlideShowPro for Flash to the Stage. Select it, then open the Component Inspector panel. At the top is DATA/XML File Path and click inside the "images.xml� field. Delete "images.xml" and enter "opml.xml" instead. Save the FLA to the folder where your OPML document is.

Step Four: Change XML file type

Directly underneath DATA/XML File Path is DATA/XML File Type. Change this from "Default" to "OPML".

Step Five: Publish

Publish a new movie, and after a few seconds all the OPML content should load as one gallery.

Note: Because this involves loading / parsing multiple XML documents, try not to assign too many XML files as one gallery. Consider breaking them up into smaller groupings if the speed is too slow.

Page last modified by bdaily on September 01, 2010, at 09:35 AM