[flexcoders] XMLList to Number

[Richard Rodseth]

I'm decoding some XML and want to detect whether a particular element (whose
text should be a number) is present and use a default number if it isn't. It
seems that if

node.min

is not present the expression still returns an XMLList, so I'm doing
something like this:

        private static function decodeNumber(value:XMLList):Number {
            if (value.length() < 1) {
                return NaN;
            } else {
                return new Number(value);
            }

Are there some E4X tricks I'm missing?
More generally, any good XML decoders that work with a class map so I can
get typed AS objects?