Page item selection question...

[deckarduk]

Hi There,

Please can someone point me in the right direction.

I've written a script that lists objects in a document in a listbox.

Currently the user can select an item in the list, press an OK button, and then be taken to the item using app.documents[0].allPageItems[k].select() when the dialog has closed. That all works fine. What I'm trying to do is create a new button, which I've done, but assign an onClick action to select the page item whilst the dialog is still open.

Is that possible using app.documents[0].allPageItems[k].select() or do I need something different?

So far that line is throwing an error. I know the ID of the page object is correct though.

Please can somone help.

Thanks.

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

What error? How do you read "k" for the 2nd button? 

[deckarduk]

Thanks for the response Robert.

I'm using var docItems = myPage.allPageItems; to get all the objects and looping through them.

I did wonder if it was due to the dialog still being open. If I execute that line after the dialog has closed it works ok.

Thanks again.

[Loic.Aigon]

I would presume that you are either using the dialogs class or ScriptUI for dialog but in modal state (Window). In both case, you can't interact with app as long as dialog is open. 

To get this to work, you would need ScriptIUI and a type "palette" for you window (also remind about the #targetengine "session" instruction).

Think at the moment UXP Scripts only provide modal dialogs as well.

HTH
Loic

[deckarduk]

Hi Loic,

Thanks for the help.

I did wonder if it might be something to do with the dialog being open as the code works if I close the dialog first. I am using ScriptUI and the type 'dialog' however, I'll now have a look at the 'palette' type.

Thanks once again for the help.

[Loic.Aigon]

And for that one, you really need to add the target engine instruction so that the palette stays open. Otherwise, it will simply vanishes as soon as it was displayed.

#targetengine "session"

var w = new Window ("palette"…

[Manan Joshi]

Hi @deckarduk,

This is most probably due to the modal dialog thing that @Loic.Aigon mentioned. In case you are still not able to fix it, share the relevant portion of your code so that we could help better.

Also, what is the error message that you get, that should give us a hint on what is wrong.

-Manan

[deckarduk]

Hi Manan,

Thanks for the help. As mentioned above, I did wonder if it had something to do with the dialog still being open.

As for the error message, I'm not sure about that. Do you have a preferred method for reporting them?

Thanks again.

[Manan Joshi]

Hi @deckarduk,

You mentioned that the line is throwing an error, so it must be giving some error message as well. Please share that here.

-Manan

[brian_p_dts]

Have you thought about why you are wanting to use .select() in the first place? More often than not, select just gets in the way. You are better off just caching a reference to the selected objects and operating on them within the script after the modal dialog has closed, without the use of select, unless there's a particular reason why you need to select the object(s). Note that you also cannot select objects on multiple spreads. 

[deckarduk · Accepted solution]

Hi Brian,

Thanks for the post.

Yes, I had thought the .select(). I have been writing something that let's the user interrogate object settings via a ScriptUI palette. If they're not happy with something they can double-click the item and they're taken to it.

Thanks for the info re multiple spreads, I'll have to make a note of that.