Select multiple text frames, find the tables therein

[AndyAtPBZinc]

I'm trying to script a pretty involved operation on multiple, selected text frames (but not all text frames in the doc), and so I'm taking it step by step. The question I'll ask for now is just the first part and I have been unable to find a script or script discussion that really addresses what I want to do. (I have found lots of documentation on how to get 1 table, or ALL the doc's tables... but that's not what I'm looking for....)

How can I select multiple text frames, some of which have a table and some that don't have a table, and gather up just the tables and put them in an array? So that I can work with just those table objects further?

Thanks for any suggestions or tips to get me going down the right path.

[Manan Joshi · Accepted solution]

Hi Andy,

You could try the following with selection of some textframes on the document run the following code

var tb = []          //This is the array that will contain the tables within the selected textframes
for(var a = 0; a< app.selection.length; a++)
{
    if("tables" in app.selection && app.selection.tables.length)
          tb.push(app.selection.tables.everyItem())
}

P.S. :- This will just find the first level tables and not nested tables

-Manan

[Manan Joshi]

For obtaining table within tables we could use the text search. Sample code mentioned below

app.findTextPreferences = app.changeTextPreferences = null; 
app.findTextPreferences.findWhat = "<0016>";
var tb = []
try{
    for(var a = 0; a< app.selection.length; a++)
    {
          var f = app.selection.findText()
          for(var i = 0; i < f.length; i++)
              tb.push(f.tables.everyItem());
    }
}catch(e){}
app.findTextPreferences = app.changeTextPreferences = null; 

-Manan

[AndyAtPBZinc]

Thank you Manan! I will give these a try and let you know how they work.

[Andreas Jansson]

"<0016>" a number meaning table? Are there more of these magic numbers?

[AndyAtPBZinc]

Manan, this works as I requested. I now have a variable with my table objects. Thanks! (And now on to figuring out how to do with code what I want to do with those tables )