InDesign Scripting with ScriptUI: Add a TestIt Button to Play Around

Based on my previous article "InDesign Scripting with ScriptUI: How to Move Cursor and Select Text", let's add a button to play around.

The original code looks like this:

// --- Last Part of UI (No Panel) ---------------------------------------------
function AddCloseButton(w) {
 w.grpButtons = w.add('group');
 w.btnClose = w.grpButtons.add('button {text: "Close"}');

 w.btnClose.onClick = function () {
  w.close();
 }
}

// -------------------------------------------------------

Let me add a button to select a piece of text.

Below in in the listener function "TestIt", I don't add the boundary checking .
You may try and modify the variables "start" and "end" to go over the boundary. And see what happens.

// --- Last Part of UI (No Panel) ---------------------------------------------
function AddCloseButton(w) {
 w.grpButtons = w.add('group');
 w.grpButtons.orientation = "column";
 w.btnTest = w.grpButtons.add('button {text: "Test"}');
 w.btnClose = w.grpButtons.add('button {text: "Close"}');

 w.btnClose.onClick = function () {
  w.close();
 }

 w.btnTest.onClick = function () {
  TestIt();
 }
}

function TestIt() {
 var myDocument;
 try {
  myDocument = app.activeDocument;
 }
 catch (xError) {
  // output message to the debug console
  $.writeln("No opened document.");
  app.activate();
  return;
 }

 if (myDocument.selection.length > 0) {
  var theParent = myDocument.selection[0].parent;
  var storyLength = myDocument.selection[0].parentStory.length;
  try {
   var start = storyLength;
   var end = -storyLength;
   // if (start => storyLength) || 
   // (start < -storyLength) || 
   // (end => storyLength) ||
   // (end < -storyLength) , 
   // an error will be catched.
   var newRange = theParent.characters.itemByRange(start, end);
   myDocument.select(newRange);
  } catch (err) {
   // output message to the debug console
   $.writeln(err.message);
  }
  app.activate();
 } else {
  // output message to the debug console
  $.writeln("No text has been clicked.");
 }
}

// -------------------------------------------------------

The line

$.writeln("Some message here.");

will output message to the debug console.
I use "Adobe Extendscript Toolkit CC" to debug my code.

The UI:

In the future, I will modify the button's click-listener to play with and test InDesign's script.

Have fun!