Participant

Question

Script to import csv file to create artboards with name and size

Forum|Forum|7 years ago
March 22, 2019
5 replies
3443 views

Hello,

is there a script or possibility to create multiple artboards via a .csv file in illustrator?

For example in the csv file is written …

Name of the artboard, height of the artboard and the width of the artboard. With that information

in the csv file illustrator could generate artboards with that specification and naming.

And is it possible to arrange the generated artboards automatically in a specific way?

For example …

artboard 1 (100 x 100 px) | artboard 2 (50 x 50 px) | artboard 3 (25 x 25 px) ↵

artboard 4 (100 x 100 px) | artboard 5 (50 x 50 px) | artboard 6 (25 x 25 px) ↵

artboard 7 (100 x 100 px) | artboard 8 (50 x 50 px) | artboard 9 (25 x 25 px) ↵

and so on …

Thanks a lot.

Saludos.

Simon

This topic has been closed for replies.

L

lackostration

Inspiring

Hi YellowCoat

Did you even solve this issue. This is EXACTLY what I need to do for a project but I can not find any way to do it. I thought I could do it with JavaScript task but I'd love to know how to do this if you or someone has a solution.

YellowCoatAuthor

Participant

Hello Carlos,

that´s what I got so far. I am not sure is good enough to

get it running with data from csv file.

var newDoc = app.documents.add(

DocumentColorSpace.RGB,

width = 1,

height = 1,

numArtboards = 1,

DocumentArtboardLayout.GridByCol,

artboardSpacing = 20,

artboardRowsOrCols = 2,);

/*var newDoc = app.activeDocument;

alert(newDoc.rulerOrigin);

alert(newDoc.pageOrigin);*/

var idoc16 = app.activeDocument;

var ab16 = idoc16.artboards.add([0, 0, 16, -16]);

ab16.name = "_16";

var rectRef = idoc16.pathItems.rectangle(0, 0, 16, 16);

var areaTextRef = idoc16.textFrames.areaText(rectRef);

areaTextRef.contents = "16";

areaTextRef.selected = true;

var rectRef = idoc16.pathItems.rectangle(0, -140, 100, 26);

var areaTextRef = idoc16.textFrames.areaText(rectRef);

areaTextRef.contents = "ROW 1";

areaTextRef.selected = true;

var idoc24 = app.activeDocument;

var ab24 = idoc24.artboards.add([36, 0, 60, -24]);

ab24.name = "_24";

var rectRef = idoc24.pathItems.rectangle(0, 36, 24, 24);

var areaTextRef = idoc24.textFrames.areaText(rectRef);

areaTextRef.contents = "24";

areaTextRef.selected = true;

var idoc32 = app.activeDocument;

var ab32 = idoc32.artboards.add([80, 0, 112, -32]);

ab32.name = "_32";

var rectRef = idoc32.pathItems.rectangle(0, 80, 32, 32);

var areaTextRef = idoc32.textFrames.areaText(rectRef);

areaTextRef.contents = "32";

areaTextRef.selected = true;

var idoc48 = app.activeDocument;

var ab48 = idoc48.artboards.add([132, 0, 180, -48]);

ab48.name = "_48";

var rectRef = idoc48.pathItems.rectangle(0, 132, 48, 48);

var areaTextRef = idoc48.textFrames.areaText(rectRef);

areaTextRef.contents = "48";

areaTextRef.selected = true;

Vinicius Baptista

Inspiring

Hello, how are you?

Welcome to our beautiful Scripting world.

As seen above you are already able to create the artboards, my question is: Why .csv files? .csv as other text files are possible to read and return to the illustrator using the simple way to read and close the file by assigning its contents to a string. Sample:

var myFile = File ('~/Desktop/Artboards.csv');
myFile.open("r");  
var contentString = myFile.read();
myFile.close();
alert (contentString);

But to do the reading and indexing of the content to use in the course of the script you should assign everything to an Array handling all the text, and this will earn you a lot of hard work ... I suggest using .XML files for this task as javascript already does the reading and indexing of an .xml natively. Here is an Sample:

Artboards.xml

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<Artboards>  
  <AB1>
       <left>0</left>
       <top>0</top>
       <right>16</right>
       <bottom>-16</bottom>
  </AB1>
  <AB2>
       <left>36</left>
       <top>0</top>
       <right>60</right>
       <bottom>-24</bottom>
  </AB2>
  <AB3>
       <left>80</left>
       <top>0</top>
       <right>112</right>
       <bottom>-32</bottom>
  </AB3>
  <AB4>
       <left>132</left>
       <top>0</top>
       <right>180</right>
       <bottom>-48</bottom>
  </AB4>
</Artboards>

To make this parseXML use the code below similarly to the .csv file:

var xmlFile = File ('~/Desktop/Artboards.xml');
    xmlFile.open('r');  
    var myXML = XML(xmlFile.read());  
    xmlFile.close();
//Here you read the node you want from xml, in case Bottom from AB1
    alert(myXML.AB1.bottom);

I think it's the most practical way to do this.

I hope helped anyway...

Greetings,

-Vinícius Dias

Stefan Rakete

Inspiring

I am using this javascript parser for tab separated CSV:

var curData = parse(curContents, false);

function parse( curContents, option) {

try {

// output object

var data = {},

// output no columns array

container = [],

// output array

records = [],

// splits csv data at each new line

lines =input.split(/\r/),

// creates columns by splitting first line of csv

columns = lines[0].split('\t');

// creates objects from csv data if column option included

if (option === true) {

// loop through each line of csv file

for (var l = 1; l <= lines.length-1; l++) {

// splits each line of csv by comma

var words = lines.split('\t');

// builds object based on column headers

for (var cell in columns) {

data[ columns[cell] ] = words[cell];

}

// pushes object to output array

records.push(data);

// resets object in order to add another

data = {};

}

} else {

// creates nested arrays from csv data if column option omitted, false or not true

for (var l = 0; l <= lines.length-1; l++) {

var curLine = lines;

// leere Zeilen ignorieren

if (curLine == "\t") continue;

// splits each line of csv by comma

var words = curLine.split('\t');

// creates objects from csv data

for (var cell in words) {

container.push(words[cell]);

}

// push array to output array

records.push(container);

// reset array in order to add another

container = [];

}

// returns output array

return records;

} catch(error){

return err;

}

YellowCoatAuthor

Participant

Hello Carlos,

thank you for your response. Yes I need help to get started with scripting.

I am not familiar with scripting and I don´t know how to start.

Thank you.

CarlosCanto

Community Expert

you can start reading a practicing with the official scripting guides/references.

Illustrator Scripting | Adobe Developer Connection

come back here and ask as many questions if you get stuck.

to get your gears going, open a document and run the following script

var idoc = app.activeDocument;
var ab = idoc.artboards.add([0, 0, 100, -200]);

it will add a new 100x200 artboard at left/top corner 0,0

CarlosCanto

Community Expert

yes, it is possible to create and arrange artboards from data in a csv. Do you need help getting started with scripting?

Srishti_Bali

Legend

Moved to Illustrator Scripting

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