Create a hyperlink via script to another document in a Book

Question

Hi all,

I have a Book-based project with multiple chapters in individual files, and I'm trying to write a script to turn mentions of particular years into hyperlinks to appropriate chapters, for easy cross-referencing in the final exported PDF. For instance, 1953 -> Chapter17.indd. So far my script successfully finds all the sources I want to link, and is able via a lookup table to convert years to the relevant chapter filenames, but I'm not sure how to then create the right kind of destination link itself in a script.

Manually in InDesign, I could do this by creating a new Hyperlink that links to either a Page (the first page of the relevant chapter), or to a Text Anchor (I can use the TOC anchor at the start of each chapter for this), both of which have drop-downs for selecting the book chapter file first. But I can't figure out how to create this kind of hyperlink via scripting. HyperlinkExternalPageDestination seems like the closest thing from the docs ("a page in a document other than the document that contains the hyperlink source"), so it feels like I should be doing something like this:

app.activeDocument.hyperlinkExternalPageDestinations.add(...);

But add() takes a Page object as its parameter, and I don't know how to get from a filename or path like "Chapter17.indd" to a Page. I thought maybe I might need to use the Book object, and was able to successfully retrieve a BookContent object that matches the right chapter; but I don't see any way in the BookContent spec for me to access Page objects within it either. Any pointers in the right direction would be much appreciated!

Peter Kahrel · Accepted Answer

In the interface, when you create an exteral-page destination, you're guided to open a document and select a page. That's more or less what you need to do in a script, even though the target document isn't changed at all. It's a bit muddled:

// Need to have the document open 
// in order to get a reference to a page

sourceDoc = app.documents.item('doc.indd');
targetDoc = app.open (app.books[0].bookContents.item('Chapter17.indd').fullName);

linkDestination = sourceDoc
  .hyperlinkExternalPageDestinations
  .add (targetDoc.pages[0]);

// Don't need the target any longer
// You have to close it, otherwise
// app.selection is no valid

targetDoc.close (SaveOptions.NO);

// Create the link source

linkSource = sourceDoc
  .hyperlinkTextSources
  .add (app.selection[0]);

// Create the hyperlink

sourceDoc.hyperlinks.add ({
  source: linkSource,
  destination: linkDestination,
});

Peter Kahrel · Answer

If you want the links to open (or go to) a document, yu can target the first page of that document.

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