[flexcomponents] Getting all XML child elements for a component's viewer

[dan_of_philly]

Hey,

I'm trying to get all the child nodes for an element in an XML tree 
given a node passed to a function as a string.

For example, given the xml:

<a>
  <first>
     <blah>...</blah>
     <foo>...</foo>
     <bar>...</bar>
  </first>
  <sec>
     <b2lah>...</b2lah>
     <f2oo>...</f2oo>
     <b2ar>...</b2ar>
  </sec>
</a>

that is stored in say :  var xml XMLList = "<a> ..."

and I have a function trying to return all the child nodes when given 
a certain element, how would I get the child nodes ? xml.. doesnt 
work if its a string.

public  function getChildNodes( name:String):XMLList
{
  var x:XMLList = xml..name ; // doesnt work ! Looks for 'name' node
  return x;
}

Assuming name:String = "sec" , I would want the function to return:

"
     <b2lah>...</b2lah>
     <f2oo>...</f2oo>
     <b2ar>...</b2ar>
"

Is the only answer to iterate through the entire tree ? That seems 
ridiculous ! I have a large xml tree, so I really dont want to 
iterate through it each time. 

Any help is appreciated. Thanks