How to open a text file using Javascript from Adobe Indesign CS4?

adobe-indesign, javascript

Solution

Here's an example of reading a file from InDesign. If you want to write to a file as well, you will need to `open` the `file` in write mode `w` instead.

// Choose the file from a dialog
var file = File.openDialog();

// Or use a hard coded path to the file
// var file = File("~/Desktop/hello world.txt");

// Open the file for reading
file.open("r");

// Get the first text frame of the currently active document
var doc = app.activeDocument;
var firstTextframe = doc.pages[0].textFrames[0];

// Add the contents of the file to the text frame
firstTextframe.contents += file.read();

Here is a link to the `File` object's documentation online. You can also find the rest of InDesign's scripting DOM documentation here.

Problem

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