Unexpected behavior when calling local API server from UXP/InDesign

InDesign
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1

Hello everyone, I’m new to the forum, new to InDesign, new to UXP, and too new to JavaScript to recognize slop when vibe coding. I’m hoping someone can point me in the right direction.

I’m creating an index for a 500 or so page genealogy book of my family. My brother is writing the book in InDesign and I’m working with Adobe’s UXP Developer Tools and JavaScript to support him. Our relative’s data resides in a substantial database collection written in Python so I’m calling a local server API (127.0.0.1) to use Natural Language Processing to find name/date_phrase entries from page contents passed to the API. I’m navigating through the book ultimately creating an index of all those references and topic levels drawn from the API response data.

Lengthy use case aside, I’m getting some unexpected behavior when calling the server from the UXP/InDesign environment. Repeated calls to my server API from a separate Python process works well taking on average 650ms to process each call.

The call to the API from InDesign/UXP hangs in the call stack until the debug script terminates. Even multiple calls to the API all initiate and resolve after the script terminates. I’ve messed with creating a promise and waiting for the response, but I’ve wasted a lot of time with various code hallucinations without any success.

I’d appreciate any human-experience with a clear direction helping me to get over the hump.

Thanks in advance,
Michael Lucido
Saint Louis, USA

SLIMMED DOWN VERSION OF API CALL

async function postData(data) {
try {
const response = await fetch(‘http://127.0.0.1:5000/api/submit’, {
method: ‘POST’,
headers: {‘Content-Type’: ‘application/json’},
body: JSON.stringify(data)});

        const rspData = await response.json();
        console.log(rspData);    
    } catch (error) {
    console.error(error);
}
console.log("Async operation complete, script can now terminate.");

}

const testData = {sentence: “Antonino Lucido (1845-1940, Fig. 37) was born in IdF …”};
postData(testData);
2

Are these single quotes a forum bug?

Otherwise switch off smart quotes everywhere where you can find them, and/or use a code editor. Replace with straight single quotes.

3

Thanks for the note Dirk, but my challenge has more to do with figuring out why the calls are not returning responses until the script terminates. I’m using Sublime for text editing and I’ll look into smart quotes as suggested. Thank you. –Michael

4

What if you call your async function with await?

await postData(testData);
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5

Plenty still to learn but that got it going for me. It’s ripping through the pages now. Thx!

1 Like