Help with targeting contentType with javascript

Question

Newbie with a problem with probably a obvious answer. I am having a little trouble in the script snippet below. In the for statement, the alert returns the contentType, so I know that I have an object selected and I can access the contentType enumeration. The switch statement (the real code where I want to process the selection depending on the contentType) returns nothing. This probably has a simple answer, I just don’t know it.
    for(var theCounter = 0; theCounter < app.selection.length ; theCounter++){
          var theThing = app.selection[theCounter].contentType;
          alert (theThing);
         switch(theThing){
          case 'GRAPHIC_TYPE' :
          alert("This is a graphic.");
          break;
         case 'TEXT_TYPE':
          alert("This is text");
          break;
       }  //End switch item checking
TIA

Answer 1

Don't get confused by the repetition of the phrase "contentType".
var theThing = app.selection[theCounter].contentType;
Here 'contentType' is just the name of the property. It could be called 'type' or 'content' or 'ct', or anything else. But its value is a member of the enumeration type "ContentType"; in this case, "ContentType.GRAPHIC_TYPE". This, as a single unit, is a variable with the constant value "1735553140", declared somewhere inside InDesign.
It is a common Javascript construct; you can define your own constants like this:
var myValue = { Test1:1, Test2:2 }
alert (myValue.Test1);
http://jongware.mit.edu/idcs6js/index_Enum%20Suite.html lists all default enumerations in InDesign (my favourite is NothingEnum, with just one member: NothingEnum.NOTHING; it bears the concise description "Nothing.", and its numerical value 1851876449 is, written out in ASCII, "nada").