New lines in Strings read from Xml

Are you reading Strings into your Flash application from Xml? Are your \n’s showing up as \n rather than a new line character? Are you confused why this is happening? Then you may be suffering from escapism.

But seriously…

Suppose you have this Xml string which is read by a URLLoader object:

<root>
<data message=”Hi.\nThis is on a new line” />
</root>

When this Xml document is loaded, you rip out the message with something like the following…

public function LoadXml(fileUrl:String):void
{
	var xmlLoader:URLLoader= new URLLoader();
	xmlLoader.addEventListener(Event.COMPLETE, processXml);
	xmlLoader.load(new URLRequest(fileUrl));
}
 
private function processXml(e:Event):void
{
	this._masterXml = new XML(e.target.data);
	this._message = this._masterXml.data.attribute("message");</code>
}

Then later you put this message into a TextField.

this._userMessage.text = this._message;

But then! Your text field looks like this (all on one line): Hi.\nThis is on a new line

How to fix it? Throw this in the process somewhere… after you deserialize from the Xml or before you write it to the TextField.

var newLine:RegExp = /\\n/g;
message = message.replace(newLine, "\n");

This will allow you to use \n in your Xml strings but also enjoy the benefits of multiple lines.

Hi.
This is on a new line

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