Getting XML attribute value

mySel=app.selection[0];
var famid=    mySel.associatedXMLElement.parent.xmlAttributes.itemByName("family_id").value;
alert(famid);

Hi,

I think I have found the problem when running your code this is the result :

Text Frame one  ( with the URI looking contents) has 4 attributes - COTYPE, family_id, sub_Families, TBGUID

Whereas

Text Frame two ( with the random text) has only 2 attributes - COTYPE, TBGUID

Therefore the code is failing on the itemByName ("family_id"); part because there is no "family_id" attribute to get.

The reason for this appears to be the structure of your XML in the document.

For text frame one it is a direct descendant of the "product_family" tag,  (

whereas

text frame two is a child of a direct descendant of the "product_family" tag.

To fix the code to work for the second text frame you need to add an extra ".parent" so you would have.

mySel=app.selection[0]; var famid=    mySel.associatedXMLElement.parent.parent.xmlAttributes.itemByName("family_id").value; alert(famid);

obviously this would then cause the first frame to be incorrect, so you need to somehow detect if you are at the correct level, I would suggest doing something like

mySel=app.selection[0];

var parentNode = mySel.associatedXMLElement.parent

var nodeValue = parentNode.xmlAttributes.itemByName("family_id")

if ( !nodeValue.isValid)

{

     nodeValue = parentNode.parent.xmlAttributes.itemByName("family_id");

}

nodeValue = nodeValue.value;

alert ( nodeValue);

Hope this helps

Malcolm