XML Rule + JS example: group elements under new parents

Thanks again to everyone here for helping me get started! I'm now making real progress. In token of my appreciation, here's something that hopefully will eventually help others.

I've worked out how to use the XML Rule facility (together w/ some JS management) to collect groups of XML elements and create new parent elements containing each group.

The sample code here demonstrates several things in both JavaScript and InDesign Script, including:

• Use of the XML Rules facility to quickly retrieve data from the XML structure
• Use of the following-sibling XPath facility to obtain same-level XML elements
• Creating XML tags, parent elements, and moving elements
• Multi-dimensional JS array for managing XML elements

By the way, here are a few more things that were not obvious to this noob (I'm sure they are documented; just took time to find them...)

• In the InDesign script editor, you can bring up the Object Model Viewer by pressing F1
• In the object model viewer, you must click below "Browser" and select the InDesign Object Model before doing a search
• At the following link is a list of links to incredibly valuable documents and a huge collection of "Scripting Guide" sample scripts. http://www.adobe.com/products/indesign/indepth.displayTab2.html#Script ingresources

• Using try { xyzzy; } catch (myErr) { alert(myErr); }  ... is your friend

Below is a description of what my sample code actually accomplishes. But first, here are some things I learned about the XML Rules facility. Probably obvious to someone who has used this before but hey, I'm new to this:

1. You create a set of XML Rules and pass them to the "glue code." Each time the set of rules is run, a single (potentially complex) traversal is made through the XML Structure.
2. The implication of #1 is that for any given element in the structure, the first rule that matches the element will process it. Thus, the sequence of rule definitions is always important. This both simplifies and sometimes makes more complex how one designs a set of rules.
3. An example in my case:
   • I wanted to collect all elements at one level into "groups", with a particular (known) tag as the first element in each group.
   • It was pretty clear how to find the known tag; use an XPath like "/devices/name" if the tag is "name" underneath "/devices."
   • But how to collect the intervening tags? In normal XPath/XSLT syntax, this is a bit complicated. But in the XML Rule system, it's actually easy...
   • Since the first rule will always collect every "name" element, my second rule becomes simply "/devices/name/following-sibling::*" which means "collect all siblings after the 'name' element. Normally, that would include following name elements as well, but it does not do so here since the first rule collects those.
4. Don't bother trying to rearrange the XML structure from within XML Rule processing. In certain limited situations it can work... but it is just as easy, and quite reliable, to collect the needed info during XML Rule processing, then make the structure changes as a later step.

The MakeXMLGroups(myXPath,myParentTag,myHeadTag) function changes:

Devices

   Name

   Type

   Desc

   Name

   Quantity

   Type

   Desc

   Name

   Desc

To:

Devices

  Device

      Name

      Type

      Desc

  Device

      Name

      Quantity

      Type

      Desc

  Device

       Name

      Desc

In this case, the function call was MakeXMLGroups("/Devices","Device","Name").

(NOTE: I'm on personal travel this week so may not get back to answer questions until next week...)

Here are links to the necessary files:

http://ds.org/files/adobe/MakeXMLGroups.jsx

http://ds.org/files/adobe/grpXMLRulesExampleSetup.jsx

http://ds.org/files/adobe/grpXMLRulesExampleData.xml

Message was edited by: SLTyPete to insert file links