Hyperlink to hyperlinkTextDestination in external document

[bcmartinez4]

I have an InDesign book (.indb) with one document for each chapter, plus one document for the table of contents.  I'm trying to automate the process of making a hyperlink from each item in the TOC to a hyperlinkTextDestination I've already added to each of the other documents.  This way, when I Export for Digital Editions, I have copy of my TOC with hyperlinks to each chapter.

My TOC is just a simple page with a textFrame, with each link on its own line, like this:

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

...

Can anyone please describe how to do this in JavaScript?  Thanks in advance for any help.

[bcmartinez4]

I was finally able to figure out the problem, and since I haven't been able to find anything on this specific topic elsewhere, I'll post it here for posterity.

The main problem was that my destination document was closed when I tried to create the hyperlink.  I stored the hyperlinkTextDestinations for each doc into an array so I could call them later, and then closed the document so the script could do other stuff.  Anyway, here are the code snippets pertinent to hyperlinking to external hyperlinkTextDestinations:

var mydocs = bookPath.getFiles('*.indd');  // Folder containing each chapter's document

var hyperlinkDestinations = new Array;

for (i=0; i<mydocs.length; i++){

  var thisDoc = app.open(mydocs);

  // Add hyperlink destinations

  var newDestination = thisDoc.hyperlinkTextDestinations.add(thisDoc.textFrames[0].insertionPoints[0]);
  hyperlinkDestinations.push(newDestination);

  thisDoc.close();

}

Then in my TOC document:

var tocdoc = app.activeDocument;

var toc = tocdoc.textFrames[0].paragraphs;

for (i=0; i<toc.length; i++) {

  // My TOC list is in the same order as my files are...

  var myHyperlinkTextSource = tocdoc.hyperlinkTextSources.add(toc);

  var tempDoc = app.open(mydocs); // Make sure doc is open before referencing hyperlinkTextDestination
  var myHyperlink = tocdoc.hyperlinks.add(myHyperlinkTextSource, hyperlinkDestinations);
  tempDoc.close();
}

This isn't my exact code (I just copied out bits and pieces), so I haven't tested it.  If anyone knows a better way of doing this, feel free to chime in.

I've taken a pretty deep dive into InDesign scripting and this forum has been incredibly helpful, so I hope this pays it forward, at least a little.  Thanks!

[TᴀW]

bcmartinez,

Thanks for posting this. It's almost exactly a year later to the day (weird!), and I've run into the identical issue you write about (here's the thread: http://forums.adobe.com/message/3353050#3353050) Hope your solution works for me as well...

Thanks,

Ariel