# How to get the day, month & year from an external xml file for the flash counter?

**URL:** <https://forum.kirupa.com/t/how-to-get-the-day-month-year-from-an-external-xml-file-for-the-flash-counter/332037>\
**Category:** flash\
**Created:** [January 6, 2014, 4:41pm UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/how-to-get-the-day-month-year-from-an-external-xml-file-for-the-flash-counter/332037 "2014-01-06T16:41:48Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![learner\_7n](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/b2d939/32.png) [@learner\_7n](https://forum.kirupa.com/u/learner_7n)\
**Post date:** [January 6, 2014, 4:41pm UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/how-to-get-the-day-month-year-from-an-external-xml-file-for-the-flash-counter/332037/1 "2014-01-06T16:41:48Z")

</div>

Hi,

I have downloaded one countdown counter which is quite nice. But instead of entering the event schedule in the source file, how can I retrieve the date (day, month & year) from an external xml file. Because I need to change very often the schedule date.

How can I modify the below code to get work done?

```auto
stop();

var year:Number = 2014;
var month:Number = 2;
var day : Number = 1;

var finalDate:Date = new Date(year,month-1,day); 

var timer:Timer = new Timer(1000);
timer.addEventListener(TimerEvent.TIMER, updateTime);
timer.start();

function updateTime(e:TimerEvent):void{
	
	var now:Date = new Date();
	var remainTime:Number = finalDate.getTime() - now.getTime();
	
	if (remainTime >0) {
		
		var secs:Number = Math.floor(remainTime/1000);
		var mins:Number = Math.floor(secs/60);
		var hours:Number = Math.floor(mins/60);
		var days:Number = Math.floor(hours/24);
		
		var secsText:String = (secs%60).toString();
		var minsText:String = (mins%60).toString();
		var hoursText:String = (hours%24).toString();
		var daysText:String = days.toString();
		
		if (secsText.length < 2) {secsText = "0" + secsText;}
		if (minsText.length < 2) {minsText = "0" + minsText;}
		if (hoursText.length < 2) {hoursText = "0" + hoursText;}
		if (daysText.length < 2) {daysText = "0" + daysText;}
		
		day_txt.text = daysText;
		hour_txt.text = hoursText;
		min_txt.text = minsText;
		sec_txt.text = secsText;
	}
	
	else {
		timer.removeEventListener(TimerEvent.TIMER, updateTime);
		timer.stop();
		gotoAndStop(2);
	}
	
}

```

Thanks for any help.