XML object for Adobe InDesign

InDesign
1

Can someone remind me how to access the XML object in UXP for Adobe InDesign?

I recall asking about it during office hours early this year and I thought I recall it being released, but now I don’t find any info. :man_facepalming:

In ExtendScript you could do things like XML_o = new XML (xmlText_s);

and then parse it all using . access and much more.

Jon

2

See this.

3

Thanks @Omachi. That DOM parser sounds similar to the old ExtendScript XML.

I’ll give that a try if I can’t get access to some sort built-in XML.

Jon

4

I also asked to implement the DOMParser and document.evaluate(...) in UXP.

Maybe doScript with ScriptLanguage.JAVASCRIPT in the UXP script is another possible workaround. Depends on the use case.

const indesign = require("indesign");
const { app, ScriptLanguage, UndoModes } = indesign ;
let jsCodeString = ""; // or file
jsCodeString += "var xmlString = \"<doc><text>Content</text></doc>\";";
jsCodeString += "var xmlObj = new XML(xmlString);"
jsCodeString += "xmlObj[\'text\'][\'@id\'] = \"123\";"
jsCodeString += "xmlObj.toXMLString();"
const res = app.doScript(jsCodeString, ScriptLanguage.JAVASCRIPT, []);
console.log("Result: " + res);

Roland

1 Like
5

@Roland_Dreger Thanks! I am definitely going to try that out Monday morning. My first need is pretty simple and I’m sure I can do it all in one do-script.

But, yes, I’m going to need a full dom parser for some of our other XML dependent tasks.

Jon

6

Reporting that calling it from ExtendScript does work for this use. Thanks @Roland_Dreger

Has anybody tried this approach:
https://developer.adobe.com/indesign/uxp/resources/recipes/xml/
?

That was also something that ExtendScript provided access to, but I never tried to use it for parsing. I guess I never understood why I’d want to add the XML to Adobe InDesign itself.

7

In principle, this works in the same way as with ExtendScript and has not changed for years or better for decades.

There are many use cases for this: validation and/or transformation of the XML structure during import, automatic formatting of text with paragraph and character styles, for tagging text passages with metadata, …

8

Thanks for the explanation, @Roland_Dreger