Photoshop Question posted in
The official user guide can be found here.

JavaScript string wildcards for photoshop

I’m learning JavaScript for use with photoshop. Im trying to select a layer in a document using a wildcard. I come from a maxscript background so using “*” as a wildcard in strings.

var srcDoc = app.activeDocument;

var a = srcDoc.artLayers.getByName("*t*"); //trying to select a layer that has t in it..

app.activeDocument.activeLayer = a;
Tags:

3

Answers


  1. Chosen as BEST ANSWER
    0

    Thanks Cobra_Fast

    Its so close its throwing back undefined not an object in the if statement line. But like you said artLayers is acting as an array, so im a bit confused.


  2. 0

    According to this bit of documentation, ArtLayers.getByName() only supports searching for exact matches.
    If Photoshop does not provide a searching mechanic, you will have to iterate through all elements in attempt to find matching ones.
    Your code could look something like this:

    var search = "t";

for (var i in srcDoc.artLayers)
{
    var layer = srcDoc.artLayers[i];
    if (layer.typename.indexOf(search) >= 0)
    {
        // assuming ArtLayer.typename is the correct name property
        // then this layer matches the search!
        // do with it what you want here
    }
}
    Login or Signup to reply.
  3. 0

    Welcome to SO. Despite the downvotes I like your question, I’m surprised PS doesn’t have a fuzzy layer name search already.

    I’ll get you up to speed:

    Looping over layers is easy. 

    var srcDoc = app.activeDocument;
var numOfLayers = srcDoc.layers.length;

for (var i = numOfLayers -1; i >= 0  ; i--)
{
  var thisLayer = srcDoc.layers[i];
}

    However, this is made more complex with layer groups and becomes as right pain at times. So you have to have a recursive function that’ll find them all. It took me a while to get my head around that one! Since we’re only dealing with art layers we’ll add them to a special artlayers array.

    You can then use regular expressions (unavailable in Maxscript:)) to look over an array of layer names.

    // group layer vegetables
var allLayers = new Array();
var artLayers = new Array();
var theLayers = collectAllLayers(app.activeDocument, 0);


var artLayerNames = "";
// loop over art layers backwards
for (var i = artLayers.length -1; i >= 0  ; i--)
{
  var temp = artLayers[i];
  var regEx = new RegExp(/t/gim);
  if (temp.match(regEx))
  {
    // if the layer contains the letter "t" show it!
    alert(temp);
  }
  artLayerNames+= artLayers[i] + "n";
}

// print out all layers
alert(artLayerNames);



// function collect all layers
function collectAllLayers (theParent, level)
{
  for (var m = theParent.layers.length - 1; m >= 0; m--)
  {
    var theLayer = theParent.layers[m];
    // apply the function to layersets;
    if (theLayer.typename == "ArtLayer")
    {
      // get the art layers
      artLayers.push(theLayer.name);
    }
    else
    {
      allLayers.push(level + theLayer.name);
      collectAllLayers(theLayer, level + 1)
    }
  }
}
    Login or Signup to reply.
Please signup or login to give your own answer.

Back To Top
Search