Illustrator object structure

Question

Hello,

is there some documentation/diagram/picture of all the Illustrator object models somewhere? I want to create separate diagrams for each model hierarchy such as text, images, etc.

P.S. I've looked at this question but the links given in reply are expired or no longer exist.

femkeblanco · Accepted Answer

This is the only diagram of the object model that I am aware of. This is just the top level of the hierarchy.

https://ai-scripting.docsforadobe.dev/_images/objectmodel.png

For the docs (if you were not aware), see either

https://assets.adobe.com/public/aa41975d-3a2b-4ba9-6658-34e88a029a63/Illustrator%20Scripting%20Reference%20-%20JavaScript_v2.pdf

or

https://ai-scripting.docsforadobe.dev/

m1b · Answer

An additional resource is the ExtendScript Debugger plugin for VSCode. Are you using it already? If so, just put a breakpoint in your code:

$.bp();

and when you run your script in the debugger it will pause at that breakpoint. Then look in the "Run and Debug" panel—it displays a wealth of information. You can inspect variables, including complex objects such as "app". You can also watch particular variables or expressions and see the call stack.

So here's an example use case: you have assigned a textFrame to a variable "tf" but you're getting strange results with it. You can examine the "tf" variable with the debugger and you may discover it isn't a TextFrame at all but maybe a GroupItem. Or perhaps it is a TextFrame but you can look into the TextFrame object and look at its methods and properties to check you are interacting with it correctly.

It's handy.

- Mark

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