[JS][CS5] Finding an object (group) by its label

Question

Hi
Is there a direct way of addressing an object by its label value? 
At the moment I am looping through all items untill it finds the label, so can be very slow.
Cheers
Roy

Answer 1

Hey!
Nice hack I think there is nothing wrong with that
I created short snippet that searches through activeDocument.allPageItems looking for specific label, it runs pretty fast. I tested it on about 5000 objects, and it needs 3-4 seconds for search, also you can search in activePage.allPageItems, so it runs lot faster. One difference is that you can search inside groups. This script returns index number in allPageItems array, so you can access object really easy.
Array.prototype.exists = function(search){
var foundCount = Array();
for (var i = 0; i < this.length; i++)
    if (this[i] == search) foundCount.push(i);
if (foundCount.length != 0)
    return foundCount;
else
    return false;
var myDoc = app.activeDocument;
var myPage = app.activeWindow.activePage;
//for active document
var myObjList = myDoc.allPageItems;
// or for active page
// var myObjList = myPage.allPageItems;
var myLblList = Array();
for(var i = 0; i < myObjList.length; i++){
    myLblList.push(myObjList[i].label);
var myID = myLblList.exists("myText");
myObjList[myID].contents = "ccc";
If you have more than one object with same label, it will return array of object numbers.
Hope it helps!
tomaxxi
http://indisnip.wordpress.com/