If you are not going to programatically update an individual data provider item, them XMLList will be fine.
However, if you ever want to have a user update a property of an item, in some editable cell for example, then you need to wrap the XMLList in an XMLListCollection. This is because when you use the collection API to modify the data, events are dispatched to ensure the UI updates to match the data update. This is similar to the relationship between Array and ArrayCollection. There is no performance reason not to use a collection. If you do not, then Flex wraps your XMLList or Array in a collection itself. So, there are no reasons not to use a collection, except for one more line of code, and several reasons you should. Performance caveat: It has become clear that accessing data an xml node is significantly slower than accessing data in a strongly typed object. This can be noticable if you have, say, a large datagrid that displays hundreds of cells. If this is the case with your app, then best practice is to pre- process the e4x xml into strongly typed objects in an ArrayCollection. Tracy --- In [email protected], "Brad Bueche" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Thanks to this group, I have come a long way in understanding this. I > want to check my setup and see if I still have further to go. Is this > the preferred way to set up a dataprovider when pulling XML in E4X > format via HTTPService? Or do I still need to some how incorporate > XMLListCollection here? > > public var xmlService:HTTPService = new HTTPService(); > public var dataProvider:XMLList = new XMLList(); > > public function loadXML():void > { > xmlService.url = "http://hostname/Data/createXML.php";; > > xmlService.resultFormat = "e4x"; > xmlService.addEventListener(ResultEvent.RESULT, > resultHandler); > xmlService.send(); > } > > public function resultHandler(event:ResultEvent):void > { > dataProvider = event.result.month; > } >
