10.9.4 Simplified Xml access

The haxe.xml.Access API exists to provide a dot-syntax access to the most common Xml methods.

Since Haxe 4 this class is named haxe.xml.Access. In Haxe 3 it was known as haxe.xml.Fast.

Here's an example of XML Access usage:

// parse some XML data
var xml = Xml.parse("
  <user name='John'>
    <phone>
      <number>0000</number>
      <number>111</number>
    </phone>
  </user>
");
// wrap the Xml for Access
var access = new haxe.xml.Access(xml.firstElement());

// access attributes
trace(access.att.name); // attribute "name"
if (access.has.age) trace( access.att.age ); // optional attribute

// access the "phone" child, which is wrapped with haxe.xml.Access too
var phone = access.node.phone;

// iterate over numbers
for (p in phone.nodes.number) {
  trace(p.innerData);
}

This code works the same on all platforms.

Accessors

There are different accessors that can be used with the Access API:

• .name returns the name of the current element (same as Xml.nodeName).
• .x returns the current corresponding Xml node.
• .att.<name> access to a given attribute. An exception is thrown if the attribute doesn't exists.
• .has.<name> check the existence of an attribute.
• .elements the list of all sub-elements (which are the nodes with type Xml.Element).
• .node.<name> access to the first sub element with the given name. An exception is thrown if the element doesn't exists.
• .nodes.<name> returns a List of elements with the given name.
• .hasNode.<name> check the existence of a sub node with the given name.
• .innerData returns the inner PCDATA or CDATA of the node. An exception is thrown if there is no data or if there not only data but also other nodes.
• .innerHTML returns the XML string built with all the sub nodes, excluding the current one.

Self-closed nodes

Please note that we cannot access self-closed nodes as "regular" ones. For example, provided this XML:

var xml = Xml.parse("<xml>
  <myNode1></myNode1>
  <myNode2/>
</xml>");

var access = new haxe.xml.Access(xml.firstElement());

var myNode1Value = access.node.myNode1.innerData; 
// no problem

var myNode2Value = access.node.myNode2.innerData; 
// ERROR, an exception is thrown!

If the XML might contain self-closed nodes, check hasNode.innerData before and default to an alternative value.

var myNode2Value = access.node.myNode2.hasNode.innerData ? access.node.myNode2.innerData : null; 

---