To start a script, it is recommended to always put it into a wrapper function that encapsulates the entirety of your script. Otherwise Illustrator can remember things from your previous script and give the illusion of something working when it shouldn't be, or vice versa.
We make a wrapper function:
#target illustrator
function test (){
// put script code inside here.
}
test();
You go through each text frame in the document by doing a loop like this.
var doc = app.activeDocument;
var thisFrame;
for (var i = 0; i < doc.textFrames.length; i++) {
thisFrame = doc.textFrames[i];
// do something
}
Now, where it says 'do someting', that's where you would need to insert some code that checks the text frame for coordinates and launches the process to deal with each text frame. So, we can make a function like this:
function processTextFrame (txtFr) {
}
Inside that function you can insert various code that deals with the text frame, and there are multiple different ways everyone can write that kind of code in their own unique style. For beginners, the simplest kind would be to create a whole bunch of if-statements.
function processTextFrame (txtFr) {
// make a 2-size array holding the numbers inside the .position of a text frame
var coords = [Math.floor(txtFr.position[0]), Math.floor(txtFr.position[1])]; // Math.floor trims the decimals.
if (coords[0] == 150 && coords[1] == 50) {
txtFr.name = "A";
} else if (coords[0] == 250 && coords[1] == 150) {
txtFr.name = "B";
} //.........................................
}
The if-statements block can get really big and hard to edit, but when starting out this kind of block can be a great learning tool for debugging and understanding variables and the like.
The if-statement is powerful because inside each if-block there can be arbitrary code that does many various things, so you are free to create a huge statement series that contains unique large or small bodies of code. However, such code is rarely used if ever because chances are that you would like to process most items in a very similar way if not the exact same way. In this case, you only wish to rename the text frame, so you'd be interested in a body of code that takes your text frame, a set of known coordinates and their respective names you want to change items to, as inputs and only renames the artwork. The process inside the if-statements can be extracted into a function. This is simplistic, but this can be used to consolidate many lines of duplicated code, if your processing function has more than one line of instruction.
function renameItem (txtFr, name) {
txtFr.name = name;
}
So now the if-statements can contain function calls with your arguments that are always expected to be there.
function processTextFrame (txtFr) {
var coords = [Math.floor(txtFr.position[0]), Math.floor(txtFr.position[1])];
if (coords[0] == 150 && coords[1] == 50) {
renameItem(txtFr, "A");
} else if (coords[0] == 250 && coords[1] == 150) {
renameItem(txtFr, "B");
} //.........................................
}
Eventually the if-statements can be way too big to manage and find one's way around so technique like using arrays and even bringing in data from a csv can be used in functions which are designed to match properties of a current item against the other input data. Here it would be nice if there could be a table of sorts where coordinates and their respective names are stored so that it could be looped-through and spare us the many if-statements in favor of one generic if-statement that just gets repeated many times.
Here is an example of an array of objects which contain the name and coordinates, being fed into a function that processed a text frame.
var processData = [
// keys 0 and 1 are set like this to easily match with the position accessors .position[0] and [1] - although this is somewhat unintuitive as I've rarely seen keys set like this.
{ name : "A", 0 : 150, 1 : 50 },
{ name : "B", 0 : 250, 1 : 150 },
];
function processTextFrame (txtFr, processData) {
var coords = [Math.floor(txtFr.position[0]), Math.floor(txtFr.position[1])];
// for-loop that tries matching the text frame coordinates to a known entry inside the processData object.
var thisDataEntry;
for (var i = 0; i < processData.length; i++) {
thisDataEntry = processData[i];
// the one if-statement here
if (thisDataEntry[0] == coords[0] && thisDataEntry[1] == coords[1]) {
txtFr.name = thisDataEntry.name;
// or renameItem(txtFr, thisDataEntry.name) if the renaming process is more than a manageable amount of lines to place into this if-block
}
}
}
So finally we can have a complete script featuring a data object.
function test () {
var processData = [
{ name : "A", 0 : 150, 1 : 50 },
{ name : "B", 0 : 250, 1 : 150 },
];
function processTextFrame (txtFr, processData) {
var coords = [Math.floor(txtFr.position[0]), Math.floor(txtFr.position[1])];
var thisDataEntry;
for (var i = 0; i < processData.length; i++) {
thisDataEntry = processData[i];
if (thisDataEntry[0] == coords[0] && thisDataEntry[1] == coords[1]) {
txtFr.name = thisDataEntry.name;
}
}
}
var doc = app.activeDocument;
var thisFrame;
for (var i = 0; i < doc.textFrames.length; i++) {
thisFrame = doc.textFrames[i];
processTextFrame(thisFrame, processData);
}
}
test();
Compare to the same code in long-form using many if-statements:
function test () {
var doc = app.activeDocument;
var thisFrame, coords;
for (var i = 0; i < doc.textFrames.length; i++) {
thisFrame = doc.textFrames[i];
coords = thisFrame.position;
if (coords[0] == 150 && coords[1] == 50) {
thisFrame.name = "A"
}
if (coords[0] == 250 && coords[1] == 150) {
thisFrame.name = "B"
}
if (coords[0] == 350 && coords[1] == 250) {
thisFrame.name = "C"
}
if (coords[0] == 450 && coords[1] == 350) {
thisFrame.name = "D"
}
}
}
test();
So, I hope this helps in your journey!
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