One question/idea though - I had some xml that had nested child nodes wherein I could pass in a node name and sort that way.

However, other times, I had XML with no nested child nodes - so in this code, I couldn't see how to access them.

I modified it slightly then to allow $element to be null. And if $element was null I did a loop like so:

//sometimes the element you want to sort is the only element and I can't seem to identify it any other way.
if ($element == null){
for (var i:int = 0; i < $xml.length(); i++){
object = {
data : $xml[i],
order : $xml[i]
};

xmlArray.push(object);
}
} else {
...your original loop code...
}

Is there a better/easier way?
Thanks again!