# XML Data length
**URL:** https://forum.kirupa.com/t/xml-data-length/262641
**Category:** flash
**Created:** [June 8, 2008, 1:48pm UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/xml-data-length/262641 "2008-06-08T13:48:26Z")
**Posts on this page:** 5
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Ricmar](https://forum.kirupa.com/u/Ricmar)
#### Post date: [June 8, 2008, 1:48pm UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/xml-data-length/262641/1 "2008-06-08T13:48:26Z")
Wonder if someone can help, I’ve loaded in to my flash file a bit of text from an external XML document which displays in a text box nicely. What I now need is to be able to get the length of the string. Is this possible?
My initial thought was:[COLOR=Blue]
text\_box.text = xml;[/COLOR]
[COLOR=Blue]trace(xml.length());
[COLOR=Black]However the trace box returns the value “1” which is assume is a boolean. Any ideas?[/COLOR]
[/COLOR]
---
### Author:  [@Alex\_Lexcuk](https://forum.kirupa.com/u/Alex_Lexcuk)
#### Post date: [June 8, 2008, 2:31pm UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/xml-data-length/262641/2 "2008-06-08T14:31:26Z")
[http://dnadillo.dn.ua/fla/XML/img-xml.swf](http://dnadillo.dn.ua/fla/XML/img-xml.swf)
[http://dnadillo.dn.ua/fla/XML/mur\_xml\_file\_img.xml](http://dnadillo.dn.ua/fla/XML/mur_xml_file_img.xml)
test text\_box.text.length
---
### Author:  [@Ricmar](https://forum.kirupa.com/u/Ricmar)
#### Post date: [June 8, 2008, 2:40pm UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/xml-data-length/262641/3 "2008-06-08T14:40:45Z")
yeah that did it, I actually tried that before but with length() which must have been the problem, thanks Alex
---
### Author:  [@dthought](https://forum.kirupa.com/u/dthought)
#### Post date: [June 8, 2008, 3:27pm UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/xml-data-length/262641/4 "2008-06-08T15:27:15Z")
Wouldn’t trace(text\_box.text.length); work?
You could also use something like xmlTextElement.toString().length if you wanted 🙂
---
### Author:  [@dthought](https://forum.kirupa.com/u/dthought)
#### Post date: [June 9, 2008, 1:34pm UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/xml-data-length/262641/5 "2008-06-09T13:34:38Z")
Ah yes, thanks for correcting that, amarghosh… still getting a little crossover knowledge from AS2 to AS3… still catches me out from time to time 🙂