Looking for a script that can look at text with specific paragraph style, then go to a website, search it, grab the specific url result and then hyperlink the text in that paragraph style, possible?

Thanks for all the comments on this, lot to think about. Sorry for missing info, on Mac, only use safari, won’t touch chrome anymore. Thanks for the AI suggestion, but pass on using that at all, more curiosity about whether this could be done and it looks like some ways exist that it could, but a lot to take into consideration on how to do it and whether it may even be worth it.

I’ve been tinkering with scripts that interact with Chrome to some success, but it’s not easy and painstaking, because I don’t know what I’m doing. But I’m getting there for my needs, so initially my thoughts are YES it can be done, because I am doing it, maybe badly, but it’s working. 
 

Depending on the website, you might not even need to search it. Some websites use predictable URL structures, so the script could generate the correct URL directly from the text.

For example, if a paragraph contains a Bible reference like John 3:16, the script could construct the URL using that reference and the required translation (NIV, ESV, etc.), then automatically hyperlink the text in InDesign. So the script only needs to construct the URL from the text, which is easier.

The script could look for a specific paragraph style, read the text, generate the URL and apply the hyperlink. That would be much simpler and more reliable than searching a website and extracting links from the results.

If the website doesn't use predictable URLs, then searching and retrieving the correct result would be more complicated, but potentially still possible.

A couple of questions:

• Which website are you actually trying to link to?

• Does each paragraph contain only the text you want hyperlinked, or is it part of a larger paragraph?

• Are the URLs predictable, or does the script genuinely need to search the website to find the correct result?

Those details would help determine the best approach.

Hi ​@Echris7733130 , Adobe’s scripting languages ExtendScript (.jsx) and UXP (.idjs) are limited to Adobe applications, so I don’t think you will be able to open and script a browser via ExtendScript or UXP.

If you are on MacOS, AppleScript can communicate between AppleScript enabled applications (i.e. InDesign and Safari), but what you are describing would not be easy.

In my view, for this particular script you have two options:

-Feed your request to an AI tool. It will, definitely, produce an initial script for you. However, if you’re not a developer, then tweaking this script, even with AI, until it does something useful may prove to be more trouble than you wish to deal with.

OR

-Hire a developer who’d write the script for you. If someone here on the forum would like to offer this service, I’m sure they’ll let you know one way or another. (In theory, I could also produce such a script, but right now I can’t allocate any time for this, unfortunately.)