Newbie scripting advice

[MrZZY]

Hoping to get some tips from successful InDesign scipters who didn't know any JS when they started. I really want to start in ID scripting - I have some experience with PHP and some other types of coding, but not JS.  In the past for programming I've bought books like the 24hours series and learned a huge amount of PHP from a PHP "cookbook". What's the best way into ID scripting? Start with JS? Or just make a brute force assault on the "Adobe InDesign CS6 Scripting Guide: JavaScript"? Whenever I look into JS the tutorials just seem to be about JS for the web. 

[BarlaeDC · Accepted solution]

Hi,

Bit of tough question,

learning JavaScript would be a good idea,

Although worth noting that InDesign ( particularly the ExtendScript is quite an old JS version ( can't remember off the top of my head) so not all of what you can learn can be used directly.

Unless you are planning on using CEP [Common Extensibility Platform] (links below) as it uses a combination of node.js and Extendscript.

github - https://github.com/Adobe-CEP

This link gives you a good description of CEP - https://github.com/Adobe-CEP/Getting-Started-guides

There are plenty of resources for JS around paid (udemy, linkedin learning).

or free ones ( a quick google will help there)

I hope this provided some guidance, any more questions and we will try to answer them

Regards

Malcolm

[brian_p_dts · Accepted solution]

I knew very little JS when I started. Like PHP, JS is loosely typed, so you have that as a starting point, and most of the main operations are similar. I would study up on javascript objects, operators, functions, conditionals, variables and arrays. Those are the main components you need to know. From there, I'd delve into the Scripting Guide. Learn the Extendscript Debugger (I use VS Code with the Extendscript Debugger extension). 

This will be your best resource for learning the InDesign Document Object Model (DOM): https://www.indesignjs.de/extendscriptAPI/indesign-latest/#about.html

Welcome, and good luck. This is a good community to get pointers, too, if you hit a wall.