Illustrator Javascript set font attributes

Question

I am relatively new to scripting for illustrator and I am having a hard time wrapping my head around it.

I would like to select some text (the whole range) and set some attributes to it.

I have named the text object in the layers panel and if possible, I would like to select it by name. (or any other easy/direct way you may suggest)

This is how I reference my objects by name.

 doc = app.activeDocument;
 doc.pageItems.getByName('myname');

I was hoping I could do keep it simple like so....

 doc.pageItems.getByName('myname').characterAttributes.size = 30;

Needless to say, this doesn't seem to work. I was looking into making characterStyles as well but that is much more complex so setting individual attributes would be my first step.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Answer 1

Ok, so I figured it out.... I was missing the .textRange selector.

 doc.pageItems.getByName('myname').textRange.characterAttributes.size = 500;

This works great for most all of the attributes, I still can't seem to set the .textFont attribute by the font name. I can set it using the index, but that's no good as I update my fonts quite often.

 doc.pageItems.getByName('myname').textRange.characterAttributes.textFont = app.textFonts[7];

Even after retrieving the name of the font, I can't set it... I assumed the way would be something like...

 doc.pageItems.getByName('myname').textRange.characterAttributes.textFont = "Arial";

No Luck Though...

Answer 2

You can use getByName(name) where name is the font's full name (i.e. including font style) as opposed to family name:

textRef.textRange.characterAttributes.textFont = app.textFonts.getByName("FiraSans-Book");

Answer 3

You can set attributes with:

doc.pageItems.getByName('myname').setAttribute("id","foo");

Source: http://www.w3schools.com/jsref/met_element_setattribute.asp

You can set the style with:

doc.pageItems.getByName('myname').style.fontSize = "medium";

The whole list of things you can put behind '.style' is here: http://www.w3schools.com/jsref/dom_obj_style.asp