yeah blog matt robinson [dot] name

simple flash rss feed reader

So I’ve been working a little bit with handling rss feeds lately and put together a simple AS3 flash reader that grabs the top stories from cnn and displays the titles in the order they appear; with a little bit of a fade as well.

*edit* this appears to be a bit buggy on Flash Player 10…

Actionscript:

import fl.transitions.Tween;
import fl.transitions.easing.*;

stop();
var loader:URLLoader = new URLLoader();

var url:String = "http://rss.cnn.com/rss/cnn_topstories.rss";
var urlReq:URLRequest = new URLRequest(url);
loader.load(urlReq);

var xml:XML;

loader.addEventListener(Event.COMPLETE, onLoaded, false, 0, true);

var fmt:TextFormat = new TextFormat();
fmt.font = new din().fontName; //font loaded into the library

var inc:Number = 2;

function onLoaded(e:Event):void {
	xml = new XML(e.target.data);//Loads all values from the XML file
	var theTitles:XMLList = xml..title;

	var myTimer:Timer = new Timer(500);
	myTimer.addEventListener("timer", timerHandler, false, 0, true);
	myTimer.start();

	function timerHandler(event:TimerEvent):void {
		if(inc<theTitles.length()){
		var title_mc:MovieClip = new MovieClip();
		title_mc.name = "cnn_title_" + inc;
		title_mc.y = -50;
		feed_mc.addChild(title_mc);

		var title_txt:TextField = new TextField();
		title_txt.defaultTextFormat = fmt;
		title_txt.name = "cnn_title_text" + inc;
		title_txt.htmlText = theTitles[inc];
		title_txt.y += inc*25;
		title_txt.embedFonts = true;

		title_txt.width = 400;
		title_mc.addChild(title_txt);

		//trace(title_mc.name);
		var myTween:Tween = new Tween(title_mc, "alpha",
                          Strong.easeOut, 0, 1, 5, true);

		inc+=1;
		}
	}
}