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A
aarong18402343
Participant
June 6, 2018
Question

Get textFrame's Tag/Label through script

  • June 6, 2018
  • 2 replies
  • 8611 views

Hello everyone,

I'm really sorry if this has already been asked, I have found discussions that touch on it, but haven't found any suggestions or solutions.

I am a web developer, with no inDesign experience, our graphic designer uses it to build our flyers.

We have been talking about translating the flyers to another language, and I have been working on making them interactive (with an image map)on our website.

If I'm going to suggest we revise the flyer structure for automating the translation, I'd like to also handle the image mapping (pulling image + area coordinates)

The thought was to write a js script that will pull the text frames from the file so I can work with them using other scripts to translate, get coordinates, etc.

I have more or less succeeded in doing this using the textFrame's name.
I'm currently renaming each item in the Layers window with a key-value naming structure (000-000-000|Title, 000-000-000|Description) and then splitting the name by '|' to get the product code [0] and the textFrame 'tag' [1]. Then I can run the 'tag' portion of the content through a translation script, or coordinate script as needed.

But there are dozens of pages with numerous products on each page, and multiple fields (title, description, price, quantity, product number) for each product.
I don't want to propose our designer meticulously rename thousands of elements.
I have found the Tags window to be much quicker to associate a type to each textFrame. But I haven't been able to work with the tags through script...

From what I've read, CS5 and later doesn't allow you to get a tag/label through scripting.

Is this true? Is anyone aware of any way around it?

-TLDR-

I have thousands of text (and image) elements in a InDesign file, and I would like to pull their contents out with a script and process them depending on the text field's type (product description, image, price, etc.).

Tags/Labels seem perfect, as I could just loop through all textFrame elements, and say if has tag 'description' then pass into translate(), if image getCoords().
And they are rather quick to associate with elements.

But from what I've read CS5 + doesn't allow you to work with tags through scripts in this way.

Any suggestions to accomplish this without working with the textFrame's names? (I'd like to avoid adding that much work to our graphic designer's monthly process)

If it is relevant I'm using inDesign CC 2017  V- 12.1.0.56

Thanks in advance for any input or direction you can provide. InDesign is not something I am familiar with 😕😕

This topic has been closed for replies.

2 replies

S
S Hopkins
Inspiring
June 7, 2018

Hi,

You might want to investigate insert/extract label. Labels are very flexible in that just about any text can be inserted into and extracted from a label. insertLabel uses a name/value pair. extractLabel requires the name to get the text stored. You can even insert a complete script (written as plain text) and run the inserted script using doScript.

For example:

var myScript = "alert ('Hello')";

var selRef = app.selection[0];

selRef.insertLabel("script", myScript);

//later as part of another script, extract and run the inserted script

var aScript = selRef.extractLabel("script");

app.doScript(aScript);

Just a thought.

L
Community Expert
LaubenderCommunity Expert
Community Expert
June 8, 2018

Hi,

the main problem of our OP will stay. How to efficiently label or name the items.

If there is a scheme for this one could write a script that does exactly this without involving the user very much.

On the other hand there are translation software suits that are using memory systems for phrases and other standard expressions that are working with IDML. Maybe that's the best way to go regarding translations.

Best,
Uwe

A
aarong18402343Author
Participant
June 8, 2018

I have done a little research into translation software. But other people in the company have worked out the translations already, so I thought simply pulling the data, swapping it and plugging it back in would be the easiest approach on my end.

If there are some suits/plugins/scripts that would translate directly from the file that might still be worth considering. Our French clients have been a little 'particular' about the translation in the past (Quebec French / France French) so I know some of our board doesn't want to rely fully on automated translations. But still something I may look into more.

I was really hoping I would also be able to address the image mapping that I mentioned in my first post.

I originally put together / came across a script to pull image coordinates. But it did all graphics.

I was hoping if our designer was able to tag items, I could use those identifiers to determine what I want to get the coordinates of, and use for the image map. That way customers could click on the images or text to view a product.

L
Community Expert
LaubenderCommunity Expert
Community Expert
June 7, 2018

Hi,

if you mean the following:

doc.pageItems.item("String")

doc.pageItems.itemByName("String")

this will work with pageItem.name only with InDesign CS5 and above.

And you get always one item in return even if more than one pageItems share the same name.

Before, in CS4, you could use the label property:

pageItem.label = "String"

and retrieve all pageItems with the same label value with:

doc.item("String");

All that said, there is one other problem you have to keep in mind:
pageItems that are nested in groups, are anchored or nested elsewhere cannot be reached with:

doc.pageItems.item("String")

doc.pageItems.itemByName("String")

If you are looking for all items, nested or not, you could use:

var nearlyAllItems = doc.allPageItems; // Returns array of pageItems

And you would loop this array to look after a distinct page item with a distinct name or label value.

Why did I named this variable nearlyAllItems and not reallyAllItems ?

Because the allPageItems array omits objects that are in states of multistate objects that are not the active state.

They cannot be reached with allPageItems!

But for this problem there is a hack! A trick I found several years ago. With every pageItems comes an id. And we could loop page items by id. That will also find page items in states that are not the active ones. Also things we never thought about as page items. What we need to do this effectively is knowing e.g. about the highest id number and possibly the lowest id number that makes sense. You could test this for yourself: Add a new document, add a simple rectangle to the page and ask about the value for id of the rectangle.

var doc = app.documents.add();
var rect = doc.rectangles.add();
alert( rect.id.toString() ); // Returns 216 in my case, your case could be different.

A good bet is that we can leave out id numbers 1 to 100, maybe 1 to 150, if we loop all page items by their ids.

And the highest number? Just add a rectangle to the document, read out its id number and remove it. Use that number to limit your loop.

Just an experiment you should do with the ESTK ( ExtendScript Toolkit ) connected to InDesign CC 2018.1 with an open document:

var doc = app.documents[0];
var tempRect = doc.rectangles.add();
var idMax = tempRect.id;
var e;
tempRect.remove();
for( var n=150; n < idMax-1 ; n++ )
{
     try
     {
          // getElements()[0] is the key feature here that will resolve a pageItem to the object that it really is:
          var currentItem = doc.pageItems.itemByID(n).getElements()[0];
          $.writeln( n +"\t"+ currentItem.constructor.name +"\t"+currentItem.name +"\t"+ currentItem.label );
     }catch( e )
     {
          $.writeln(n +"\t"+ e.message );
     };
}

Below the result of a new empty document with a different document preset than the one I did before where the highest id number was 216. This time it was 221.The loop ran from 150 to 221. If you'll test this, you could run it with 1 to the max number to see if there are interesting things you might find in the lower numbers.

Note: A page item could be addressed e.g. by its id as well:

doc.pageItems.itemByID(Number);

Important:

With getElements()[0] you can resolve that page item and know exactly what kind of pageItem this is, a rectangle, a textFrame or something else.

And with doc.pageItems.itemByID(Number) you can always drill through nested structures like groups etc.pp. to access the item.

150    ObjectStyle    [Einfacher Textrahmen]    
151    ObjectStyle    [Einfaches Raster]    
152    Object is invalid
153    CrossReferenceFormat    Vollständiger Absatz und Seitenzahl    
154    CrossReferenceFormat    Vollständiger Absatz    
155    CrossReferenceFormat    Absatztext und Seitenzahl    
156    CrossReferenceFormat    Absatztext    
157    CrossReferenceFormat    Absatznr. und Seitenzahl    
158    CrossReferenceFormat    Absatznr.    
159    CrossReferenceFormat    Name des Textankers und Seitenzahl    
160    CrossReferenceFormat    Name des Textankers    
161    CrossReferenceFormat    Seitenzahl    
162    TOCStyle    [Standard]    
163    CompositeFont    [No composite font]    
164    CompositeFontEntry    Kanji    
165    Object is invalid
166    CompositeFontEntry    Kana    
167    CompositeFontEntry    Interpunktion    
168    CompositeFontEntry    Symbole    
169    CompositeFontEntry    Latein    
170    CompositeFontEntry    Zahlen    
171    XmlStory        
172    Object is invalid
173    Object is invalid
174    Object is invalid
175    Object is invalid
176    Object is invalid
177    Object is invalid
178    Object is invalid
179    Object is invalid
180    Object is invalid
181    Object is invalid
182    Object is invalid
183    Object is invalid
184    Object is invalid
185    Object is invalid
186    Object is invalid
187    Object is invalid
188    XMLTag    Root    
189    Object is invalid
190    Object is invalid
191    Object is invalid
192    Object is invalid
193    Object is invalid
194    Object is invalid
195    Object is invalid
196    Object is invalid
197    Layer    Internal_pages_layer_name    
198    Layer    Ebene 1    
199    TrapPreset    k[No Trap Preset]    
200    TrapPreset    kDefaultTrapStyleName    
201    Spread        
202    Object is invalid
203    Object is invalid
204    Object is invalid
205    Object is invalid
206    Page    1    
207    Section        
208    MasterSpread    A-Musterseite    
209    Object is invalid
210    Object is invalid
211    Object is invalid
212    Object is invalid
213    Page    A    
214    Page    A    
215    Assignment    Nicht zugewiesener InCopy-Inhalt    
216    Object is invalid
217    Object is invalid
218    Object is invalid
219    Object is invalid
220    Object is invalid
221    Object is invalid

As you can see from this list I'm running a German InDesign version. And, it might be a surprise to you, you could also address a page with doc.pageItems.itemByID(Number). In my case, yours will be different, by id number 206. That's the page named 1. It has an empty string as label by default, but a name, and that is "1".

Please note, that in DOM documentation of all the objects listed above you will find none documented under pageItems. Only by ID you can see them as pageItems. "Normal" pageItems like rectangles, textFrames etc. pp. will be listed as well, if there are any. And this time really ALL pageItems of the document are in the list. Also the ones that are deeply nested!

Happy hunting after named or labeled items!

Regards,
Uwe

    A
    aarong18402343Author
    Participant
    June 8, 2018

    Thank you so much for the detailed response.

    Just to clarify, in these later versions of inDesign, there is no way to group items and then get an array/list of those group items via script?

    As I mentioned, I did have it 'working' by using the items Name. But I really don't want to ask our graphics designer to carefully name 6 elements for each of the hundreds of products when she creates the flyers each month.
    If that's really the best solution given the version we are using, I may have to suggest that. But if there was any way to associate a tag/label/class identifier to a group of elements so I could do something like...

    //GET DESCRIPTION ITEMS

         descList = []; 

         descItems = app.activeDocument.textFrames.item("description"); 

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

              descList.push(  translateText( descItems.contents )  ); 

         }

    //GET PRICE ITEMS

         priceList = []; 

         priceItems = app.activeDocument.textFrames.item("price"); 

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

              priceList .push(  formatPrice( priceItems.contents )  ); 

         }

    //GET IMAGE ITEMS

         imageList = []; 

         imageItems = app.activeDocument.textFrames.item("image"); 

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

              imageList .push(  getCoordinates( imageItems )  ); 

         }

    function translateText( textString ) { ... }

    function formatPrice( priceString ) { ... }

    function getCoordinates( imageItem ) { ... }

    Again, I have little to no experience with inDesign directly beyond the past few days, but it seems like it was a very practical feature to be able to group items and retrieve a list of them. I don't see why this would have been removed in the more recent versions.

    Is it a reasonable approach to consider getting a version of CS4, and trying to open the file in that just to run it through a script like this?

    Thank you again,

    I truly appreciate you taking the time to provide such an informative reply.

    L
    Community Expert
    LaubenderCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    June 8, 2018

    aarong18402343  wrote

    Thank you so much for the detailed response.

    Just to clarify, in these later versions of inDesign, there is no way to group items and then get an array/list of those group items via script?

    …

    If you identified a group you'll get an array of all page items of a group with:

    var allItemsOfGroup = group.allPageItems;

    If you want to identify text frames you best resolve the items as you loop.

    for( var n=0;n<allItemsOfGroup.length;n++ )
    {
        var currentItem = allItemsOfGroup.getElements()[0];
        if( currentItem.constructor.name == "TextFrame" && currentItem.label == "MyLabel" )
        {
         /* do something*/
        };
    };

    Regards,
    Uwe

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