Multiple Labeled PageItems

For checking, you can use the instanceof operator:

var a = app.activeDocument.textFrames.item("bla");
if( a.contents instanceof Array ) ...

The following does not work, though:
a instanceof TextFrames

Dirk

Jongware,

Yes it does, and yes, there are times when that is useful.

Peter,

Thanks. I think I tried to actually do that but must have screwed up the syntax.

Dave

Does the reverse work as well?

>app.activeDocument.textFrames.item("label").contents = ...

That could be useful ... (thinking ...)

I too have some intuitive reservation against try/catch, which I feel boils down to closing your eyes and hoping for the best. Somehow it seems better first to try whether it's safe to do something -- look before you leap, as it were. Still, try/catch is useful and I use it a lot, especially when it's not evident which exceptions to test for.

As to "how do you know if you have more than 1 returned?", maybe you could use this:

>if (myDoc.textFrames.item("MyLabel").getElements().length > 0)

to see if there are more than one textframes labelled "MyLabel".

Peter

Here's what I (in effect) used:

dataFrame = myDoc.textFrames.item("MyLabel");

if (dataFrame != null) {

  try {

    dataFrame.absoluteFlip.length;

    alert("More than one frame; using the one on page " + dataFrame.parent[0].name);

    myData = dataFrame.parentStory[0].contents;

  } catch (e) {

    myData = dataFrame.parentStory.contents;

  }

  // process myData here

}

And while this works, I always feel like I cheated if I resort to using try/catch for this kind of thing.

Oddly, even though dataFrame.absoluteFlip.length returns a valid value when more than one frame is returned (as a composite reference), dataFrame.absoluteFlip.hasOwnProperty("length") returns false -- which rather floored me.

Dave