How to add inline graphics programmatically into a table cell in InDesign - adobe-indesign

Question

I have a table in an InDesign document. I will to add an inline image to the first cell.
var myPics = File("/c/test.png"),
myDoc = app.activeDocument,
myPage = myDoc.pages[0],
myTable = myDoc.stories.everyItem().tables[0],
myCell = myTable.cells[0];
myCell.contents = myPics;
I expect there should be an image put into the cell, but the file address is filled instead. What should I do?

Answer 1

The contents of text objects in InDesign are not exact equivalents of actual formatted native InDesign text; they are always cast to and from simple Javascript text strings. Reading the contents discards all of InDesign's text attributes (for instance, text formatting, hyperlinks, bookmarks, XML markers, and all meta-objects such as images); and writing contents fills the destination with plain text, formatted with the default formatting of the text container at the location you place the text.
You cannot store a PNG file "in" a Javascript variable; not as a File object (it will not be parsed into the actual file's contents), and not as 'an image' (the contents will be treated as a text string, not 'meaning' anything).
The proper way is to use place, which can work on an InDesign document as a whole, in which case the file will be imported directly 'on' a page, or using a text location through a valid property such as its insertionPoints:
var myPics = File("/c/test.png"),
myDoc = app.activeDocument,
myPage = myDoc.pages[0],
myTable = myDoc.stories.everyItem().tables[0],
myCell = myTable.cells[0];
myCell.insertionPoints[0].place(myPics);
If you want make sure the contents of myCell is empty before placing, you can add
if (myCell.texts[0].length > 0)
myCell.texts[0].remove();
A warning on your use of everyItem(): when used this way, it is a live collection. A collection acts like an array, except that each element of the collection is 'seen' as the one and only object. Thus, you can do something like
myTable.cells.everyItem().contents = "hello!";
and the text will appear in every single cell, because of the everyItem() command. But since you already created a collection of tables -- myDoc.stories.everyItem().tables[0] will be a list of "the" first table in all of the current document's stories -- you will find, to your surprise, that all of these will suddenly contain hello as well.
You can see this if you place a copy of your current text frame on the same page and run my version of your script again. You will find it inserts the same image in both the tables!
Presumably you want to insert the image only once, in the first table, in the first story, on the first page. That would then be
myTable = myPage.stories[0].tables[0];