Deleting specific templates (not pages)

[benjaminn56911034]

Is there a way to delete specific templates without any reference to pages?

Currently on my set up i have options to spawn templates with no preferred order (as intended) and this results in the templates possibly spawning on different pages, depending on the user. (current code is a simple a.spawn({nPage: this.numPages, bRename: true, bOverlay: false}); on all my checkboxes)

However, i also want to give the user an option to remove the template as well. My current knowledge of deleting templates only consists of this.deletePages(). To the best of my knowledge, this deletes specific pages, not templates, which is what i want. Is there a code snippet that target specific templates instead of pages?

[Bernd Alheit]

Acrobat Reader can only delete spawned pages.

[benjaminn56911034]

I'm using acrobat pro, if it helps.

Perhaps i could elaborate a little more. I created a few templates that i named it SectionB, C, etc. However, the order of which they are opened are not specified, which means that a user can click to open Section C before Section B (on page 1 where all the checkbox fields are), resulting in page 2 being Section C and page 3 being Section B.

However, i also want to have the option to delete the Sections that were spawned as well. Because of the unspecified order that the Sections are opened (Section B can be on page 2 or 3 or whatever order the user opened it), i can never accurately delete a specified Section. If the user opens Section B, and wants to delete it after, a command to delete the page will never work because the particular section may not spawn at the same page every time.

I hope i made sense, really need some advice on this..

[Bernd Alheit]

In a hidden text field on the template page you can save the section name. When the user wants delete Section B you can find all spawned pages of Section B.

[benjaminn56911034]

Sorry, i don't really understand what you are trying to say here. How would the user delete section B from the template page? I want the page to be deleted from a checkbox on page 1, not from the template page.

[maxwyss]

Just hanging in here…

As you set the Rename flag, fields on your spawned Template do contain the name of the Template.

So, in order to find the page number of the spawned Template, loop through the field names, and if there is a match of the field name with the template name, you get the page(s) on which it exists. Then delete those pages.

A warning: Because the page number of the spawned page becomes part of the field name, there is a risk for unwanted duplicate field names. To prevent this, it may be better to save the spawned field's values, delete all spawned pages (after the page to be actually deleted), and to re-spawn the remaining pages, and finally restore the field values.

[benjaminn56911034]

Could you provide me with a code snippet of how i would go about doing this? I love to try this but i have no idea how..

[try67]

This is not a trivial scripting task. You would need to write a code that does something like this:

- Iterate over all the fields in the file.

- Test their name against a regular expression that contains that name of the Template which you want to delete.

- If there's a match, add that page number to an array of page numbers to delete (if it's not already there).

- Sort that array by ascending or descending order.

- Iterate over that array (from the start if it's descending, or from the end if it's ascending), deleting each page number that appears in it.

[benjaminn56911034]

Dang, that sounds non-trivial indeed. Is there a place where i can have a glimpse of how the code would look like? I have enough common sense to replace certain codes that is specific to my document, but unfortunately not programming-savvy enough to conjure scripts out of thin air.

[try67]

You can hire someone to write the code for you, and then learn from it.

I've developed similar things in the past and would be happy to do so for you as well, for a small fee.

You can contact me privately via try6767 at gmail.com to discuss it further.

[benjaminn56911034]

Thanks for the offer. I'll give it a few more shots, and see what i can come up with. Cheers.

[George_Johnson]

If you want to do that, make the template page hidden, and generate what you now have as a visible page that is a template by spawning the hidden template.

[benjaminn56911034]

yes, this is exactly what i am doing now. I have 7 pages in total, 6 of which are templates and hidden. The first page is an introduction and is where the checkboxes are for them to spawn and delete the 6 different sections (in any order they want).

However i cannot find a method to delete the pages that is specific to the particular section. If user 1 spawns the Sections in the sequence A B C D E F (in order from page 2 - 7), compared to user 2 who spawns Sections in the sequence B F D A C E (in order from page 2-7), i need a method to accurately delete Section C, for example, when both users click "Remove Section C" on page 1.

My current code this.deletePages() cannot target Section C, for example. I can set it to delete page 4, but that'll only work for user 1, and not user 2.