insert variable into string

[Dan Ebberts]

This should work:

myLayer.property(“position”).expression = ‘thisComp.layer(“‘ + theLayer + ‘”).position;’;

Note the use of single quotes to get the double quotes into the expression.

Dan

[Bryan Woods]

Yup, that did the trick. Although my example wasn’t entirely accurate, I needed to add .toString() to my variable to get it to work properly, but I got it working! Glad to see you’re still hanging around here Dan! Always appreciative of your help. Its been a while since I’ve needed to script in AE again; a little rusty.

Actually, one quick followup:
How would you insert a large chunk of expression but keep it readable in my script editor? At the moment, I have to crush all of the expression code I’m inserting into one very long line. Is there some operator, like \n to do a line break, but not affect the actual expression being inserted?

Thanks again!

[Dan Ebberts]

Mine usually end up looking like this:


var theExpr = 'x = 100;\r' +
'y = 100;\r' +
'z = 100;\r' +
'[x,y,z]';

var theLayer = app.project.activeItem.layer(1);
theLayer.property("Position").expression = theExpr;


Dan

[Patrick Grossien]

Hi Dan,

I’m facing a similar problem. I’m trying to reference the name of a parent composition via a text layer source text in a pre-comp (in order to grab values of controllers in that parent comp).

Any idea if and how I might get this to work?

parentComp = '"'+thisComp.layer("Name_Parent_Comp").text.sourceText+'"';
freq= comp(parentComp).layer("Glitch Controller").effect("RGB glitch FREQUENCY")("Slider");
amp= comp(parentComp).layer("Glitch Controller").effect("RGB glitch AMPLITUDE")("Slider");


[Dan Ebberts]

I think this is all you need to do:

parentComp = thisComp.layer(“Name_Parent_Comp”).text.sourceText.value;

Dan

[Patrick Grossien]

YES! Thanks Dan!

parentComp = thisComp.layer("Name_Parent_Comp").text.sourceText.value;
freq= comp(parentComp).layer("Control_Layer").effect("frequency")("Slider");