Selecting connected objects with extend script?

[Bill McLean]

Give I have the document with multiple text frames (orange with text) and a number of lines and small shapes (black circles or orange small squares:

Some of the rules are:

• A text frame is connected with a keyline if the either end point of a line lies within the bounding box of the text frame.
• A symbol (small black-filled circle or orange filled square) is connected with the text frame.
• A line crossing under another is not connected.

There is a brute force solution to this problem where I create an array of text frames, an array of point objects (for the lines) and an array of shapes. Sort each array by x  coordinates and y coordinates.  Traverse the points array (line start and end points) and see what objects/text frames contain the points.

Is there a more elegant solution where I can leverage the selection engine.

[Peter Kahrel]

I would do it like this:

If a symbol needs to be connected to a text frame with a keyline, name the symbol on the Layers panel, using the text frame's content for the name.

Then cycle through the text frames. For each text frame, if there is a named symbol, draw a keyline on the fly from the text frame to the symbol.

for (i = 0; i < frames.length; i++) {
  if (myDoc.pageItems.item(frames.contents).isValid) {
    // Draw a keyline between the frame and the symbol
  }
}

Peter

[Vamitul]

I don't see any other approach except for "brute force". You can fine-tune it a bit, however:

1) function isConnected(line,symbolOrTextFrame){return Boolean}
2) arrayOfLines

3) arrayOfTextFramesAndSymbols

iterate through the lines array, for each find the connected object, then remove the found connected object form it's array.