I wrote a script that will change a swatch color, but why does it work?

Question

I want a script that will change a swatch in my Illustrator document, where this particular swatch is named “strap”.

I looked over the Internet, and didn't find anything that worked, but I noticed people seem to string together .spot and .color in ways I don't understand. So for about twenty minutes I just randomly put together combinations of spot and color, and I found something that works. But I don't understand. Why is this “spot” necessary at all? How does it make sense to repeat “color” twice? Here is the code:

var doc = app.activeDocument;
var swatches = doc.swatches;
var my_color = doc.swatches.getByName("straps");

my_color.color.spot.color.red = 41;
my_color.color.spot.color.blue = 62;
my_color.color.spot.color.green = 78;

Answer 1

I would urge you to not to think of the program as a natural language (text is not what gets executed). But rather a object subobject lookup. It makes more sense thatway. So lets unpack it for you:

my_color - is a swatch object (better call it my_swatch?)
    color - property of the swatch, containing a color object

Now you have loaded color into a unnamed handle and that:

unnamed - color object that happens to be of type spot
    spot - property of unnamed that contains a color object

And that object in turn is unnamed and happens to be a RGBColor object...

The name string makes sense when you look at the objects contained. But since it is not aimed to be natural language it does look wierd. But it is actually shorthand object lookup so anything is sane.

Its a bit like having a building complex out if many buildings called building a and then asked to go to building f. Or having a box within a box for example.