Flash Movies Using XML Loading Won't Work
- 1). Check all of your URLs. Check the addresses that your Flash file is using to load the XML. Make sure you check whether absolute or relative references are being used, as these will naturally behave differently on your own computer as opposed to when they're used on the Web. Check that the addresses do actually correspond to where the XML files are residing. Make sure you have uploaded all of the files you need.
- 2). Check your ActionScript code. Make sure your syntax is correct, and check any error messages that Flash is displaying when you test the movie. Try using a local XML file in the same directory as your Flash file to see if that works. Add trace statements to check which parts of your code are executing and which are not. If you are loading your XML into an XML object, try printing this out in a trace statement to see if it is indeed being loaded into the Flash file. If it is being loaded, but the rest of your movie is not working, check your XML processing code. (See Reference 1)
- 3). Check the XML syntax. If you are loading your own XML data, make sure the XML has been well-formed. You can do this by validating it using a Web validator. Many XML syntax errors will be visible just by viewing the file in a text editor that highlights your markup. Valid XML should contain elements, child elements and optionally attributes, although there are many different approaches to modeling XML. Check also that the data within your XML is correct, for example if you are using it to load text or other media files. (See Reference 2)
- 4). Tidy up the loaded XML before attempting to process it. Many XML documents have additional content that can interfere with Flash processing. You can include functions within your ActionScript to remove both white space and CDATA from your XML content when it is loaded, before you try to work through the XML elements themselves. CDATA is character data and often appears within XML files, but can prevent Flash from being able to process the XML itself. (See Reference 3)
- 5). Prevent the XML from being cached. When you load an external resource into Flash, there is always a chance that it will be cached by either the Flash Player or the Web browser it's being viewed in. This is to prevent the resource from having to be fetched when unnecessary, but can also prevent your XML data from being loaded correctly. You can include simple code excerpts to prevent Flash from using cached XML data by adding a variable to the URL you are loading the XML from. Add either a random number or the current date and time so that Flash reads the URL as being different each time. (See Reference 4)
Source...