Toggle visibility for sublayers in AI

Question

I want to toggle the visibility of the sublayers with a certain name. Now, I've seen it done for a layer:

#target illustrator all_layers = app.activeDocument.layers.getByName("Layer 8") all_layers.visible = ! all_layers.visible

Here is how I reference a sublayer, but I cannot connect the dots.

How to reference a sublayer by name in an Illustrator script?

Thanks!

Answer 1

Considering that you are working with groups (and not nested layers), the below script will toggle the “hidden” attribute of groups within layers (and nested layers):

// jshint -W118
// globals app

// jshint ignore:start
#target illustrator
#targetengine main
// jshint ignore:end

function loop(flag, layers) {

    var groups, groupsCount;
    var subLayers, subLayersCount;
    var i1, i1l;
    var i2, i2l;

    // Loop over layers:
    for (i1 = 0, i1l = layers.length; i1 < i1l; i1++) {

        $.writeln('Layer: ', layers[i1].name);

        // Get layer groups:
        groups = layers[i1].groupItems;
        groupsCount = groups.length;

        // If there are nested groups:
        if (groupsCount) {

            for (i2 = 0, i2l = groups.length; i2 < i2l; i2++) {

                $.writeln('Group: ', groups[i2].name);

                // Does group match flag?
                if (groups[i2].name.toLowerCase() == flag) {

                    // Flag matched, so toggle hidden attribute:
                    groups[i2].hidden = ( ! groups[i2].hidden);

                }

            }

        }

        // Get layer layers:
        subLayers = layers[i1].layers;
        subLayersCount = layers.length;

        // If there are nested layers:
        if (subLayersCount) {

            // Call self and recurse:
            loop(flag, subLayers);

        }

    }

}

if (app.documents.length > 0) {

    // This script assumes you want to toggle visibility of “groups”
    // with a name that matches first argument passed below.
    loop(
        'featured product', // Group name used to toggle visibility.
        app.activeDocument.layers
    );

}

Test file: test.ai

Note that I didn’t take into account nested layers with the name of “featured product”, but (not having given this scenario too much thought) you could simply add a condition to toggle the layer visibility for that layer instead of recursing into it's contents.

Ideas for a slight improvements to the code:

• Prompt the user to input a string as the target group name to toggle
• Include an option to show/hide layers in that same prompt window (as a checkbox perhaps?)
• Wrap code in IIFE plus general house cleaning of syntax

Be warned that I have not stress-tested the above code, so caveat emptor. :)