Adobe InDesign CS5 Scripting Tutorial

Adobe InDesign CS5 Scripting Tutorial Scripting and the InDesign object model 13
JavaScript //To convert from a number to a string:
myNumber = 2;
myString = myNumber + "";
//To convert from a string to an integer:
myString = "2";
myNumber = parseInt(myString);
//If your string contains a decimal value, use "parseFloat" rather than "parseInt":
myNumber = parseFloat(myString);
//You can also convert strings to numbers using the following:
myNumber = +myString;
VBScript Rem To convert from a number to a string:
myNumber = 2
myString = cstr(myNumber)
Rem To convert from a string to an integer:
myString = "2"
myNumber = cInt(myString)
Rem If your string contains a decimal value, use "cDbl" rather than "cInt":
myNumber = cDbl(myString)
Variables
A variable is a container for a value. They are called “variables” because the values they contain might
change. A variable might hold a number, a string of text, or a reference to an InDesign object. Variables
have names, and you refer to a variable by its name. To put a value into a variable, you assign the data to
the variable.
In our first sample script, above, we used the variables myDocument and myTextFrame to avoid having to
provide the full specification of the object (such as text frame 1 of page 1 of document 1 or
app.documents.item(0).pages.item(0).textFrames.item(0)) every time we refer to the object.
In all the sample and tutorial scripts that come with InDesign, all variables start with my. This way, you can
easily differentiate variables we created in a script from the scripting language terms.
Assigning a value to a variable
Assigning values or strings to variables is fairly simple, as shown in the following table:
Language Examples of assigning a value to a variable
AppleScript set myNumber to 10
set myString to "Hello, World!"
set myTextFrame to make text frame at page 1 of myDocument
JavaScript var myNumber = 10;
VBScript myNumber = 10
var myString = "Hello, World!";
var myTextFrame = myDocument.pages.item(0).textFrames.add();
myString = "Hello, World!"
Set myTextFrame = myDocument.Pages.Item(1).TextFrames.Add