How to use XML looping over mixed content in Indesign?

Question

This is something I have been wrestling with for a couple of hours now, although in different non working forms.

I have a simple XML which I import through File > Import XML

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>  
<doc>  
  <page>  
      <p id="1">  
          hello <test />  alien world <br /> from space  
      </p>  
      <p id="2">  
          hello <test /> another alien world <br /> from space  
      </p>  
  </page>  
</doc>

For now my goal is rather simple namely iterate over all elements. This works until i'm at the point that I want to iterate over the (mixed) content within my p tags.

// check version  
if (parseInt (app.version) > 4 && app.documents.length > 0){  
main();  
}  


function main() {  
// get active document  
var doc = app.activeDocument;  


// get xml that has been imported  
var xmlDocument = doc.xmlElements[0];  


// get page elements  
const page_elements = xmlDocument.evaluateXPathExpression('/doc/page')  


// iterate over page elements  
for(var x = 0; x < page_elements.length; x++) {  
   // within each page element look for p elements  
   const p_elements = page_elements[x].evaluateXPathExpression('./p');  

   for(var y = 0; y < p_elements.length; y++) {  

       var child_elements = p_elements[y].evaluateXPathExpression('./node()');  

       for (var z = 0; z < child_elements.length; z++) {  
         $.writeln(child_elements[z].markupTag.name);  
         $.writeln(child_elements[z].contents);  
       }  
   }  
}  
}

The problem is that doesn't seem to keep in mind the order of the child items.

The output - according to the Extended Toolkit - is "p hello alien world from space test br" while it should be "hello test alien world br from space".

I'm basing myself on the documentation that is available here (http://jongware.mit.edu/idcs4js/index_XML%20Suite.html) including the use of XmlElements or XmlItems but with no prevail :-(

A posible alternative that I'm now thinking at is to read the xml file through javascript, create a XML object from that string and go further from here.

Nicolai Kant · Accepted Answer · 2017-08-10T10:49:52.957

Your output is correct, it is just not what you expected.

The contents of the p tag is all text in this tag, so you get

1   tag name - p

2   tag contents  = hello alien world from space  

3   name of the next tag in the collection -> test

4   name of the next tag in the collection -> br

Both test and br nodes do not have any contents - they are empty nodes.

You can try to insert <test> some text</text> to see how it works. The result should be

p 
hello alien world from space 
test
some text 
br

How to use XML looping over mixed content in Indesign?

1 Answers1