Capture text between tags?

[MadMich]

Can anyone point me in the righ direction in the api reference as to how i capture a text string?

I have a text string like so "<b> my text <b>"

I want to be able to capture the text between the two '<b>' and change it's style to bold.

[CarlosCanto]

var myString = "<b>my text<b>";

var mysubString = myString.slice(3,myString.length-3);

alert(mysubString);

alert(myString);

[MadMich]

Thanks Carlos thats a great help i have not used the 'slice' before.

I have another question, how would i capture the text string between the two "<b>" if it is variable?

In other words any text found between two "<b>" anywhere in my document is to be selected and font style changed to bold?

[CarlosCanto]

same way, same code. I'll work regardless of the string, regardless of the tag <?>, it is based on character count.

slice is saying "give me a string starting at the 4th character, stop after the 4th character before the end"

now if you want to evaluate for <b> before you do something with it, slice the first 3 character to see if it is equal to "<b>" then do your thing accordingly.

[MadMich]

So would i be correct in assuming that i need to do something like this to capture anything between the first 3 and the last 3 characters?

string = text.contents

var myString = "<b>string<b>";

etc

[CarlosCanto]

something more like this

var idoc = app.activeDocument;
var text = idoc.textFrames[0];

var myString = text.contents; // "<b>my text<b>";
var mysubString = myString.slice(3,myString.length-3);
alert(mysubString);
alert(myString);

[MadMich]

Thanks again CarlosCanto,

I think i am not making much sense as your sample captures everything in the text frame! I really only want what is between the two "<B>"s.

I think i may need ot look at this differently, maybe capture text between 1st and 2nd "<B>", then loop through job and capture 3rd and 4th pair and so on.

Thanks for your help.

[CarlosCanto]

I don't understand

alert(myString); // returns everything in the thextFrame --> "<b>my text<b>"

alert(mysubString); // returns only the text between the <b> tags --> "my text"

[Muppet_Mark-QAl63s]

Where is this text coming from it looks like XML of which I know very little (well almost nothing actually)… But the ESTK does have an XML object that will allow better handling of this…

var mystring = '<b> my text <b>'; var myXML = new XML(mystring); alert(myXML.elements().length()); alert(myXML.child(0).toString());

[MadMich]

Sorry MM i was busy replying to CC.

You are correct i am modifying xml data using a combination of applescript and javascript. Cracking this part of the javasscript will save time later on.

Thanks for the heads up on the Xml object i'll check it out.

[MadMich]

The script you gave me works fine for for a text frame that has only "<b>my text<b>"

But my text frame may be over 20 sentences and I need to be able to find any text between say <?> and <?>. Here is an example of what i am trying to get a handle on..

"This text <b>needs<b> to be bold. This text <b>also<b> needs to be bold. This <i>text<i> needs to be italic, and finally this <u>text<u> needs to be underlined."

So as you can see in the text above I want to capture, the words "needs", "also", "text" and "text" so that i can then change there styles.

Hope this makes more sense.

[Jongware]

Are you aware that your examples are not properly formed XML?

[MadMich]

Yes i am, the tags i used where just an example loosely based on some i've seen.

The text im trying to catch could be between anything that is unique ie "<b>" could be "-->".

It can be done using applescript but I'm already running a javascript on each text frame and thought it made sense to do this in javascript at the same time.

I hadn't anticipated that a question of grabbing random text between two unique place holders (one at the front and one at the back) would create such a debate!

Thanks for the interest [Jongware]

[CarlosCanto]

oh, ok, this will do

var myString = "This text <b>needs<b> to be bold. This text <b>also<b> needs to be bold. This <i>text<i> needs to be italic, and finally this <u>text<u> needs to be underlined.";
var firstIndex = 0;
var nextIndex = 0;
var lastIndex = myString.lastIndexOf ("<");
var mysubString = "";
var start = 0;
while (nextIndex!=lastIndex)
     {
               firstIndex = myString.indexOf (">", start);
               nextIndex = myString.indexOf ("<", firstIndex);
               mysubString = myString.substring(firstIndex+1, nextIndex);
               alert (mysubString);
               start = nextIndex+3;
     }