reading text from a file

[Filip Vandueren]

Yes, the way you have this set up, the external file needs to be valid Javascript.
in Javascript you need to escape quotes to use within a quoted string:


myvalue= "myvalue is using \"these kinds of quotes\" even though it's delimited by double quotes";


Furthermore, I thought $.evalFile() was officially not supported, but seems to work here.

[Vasyl Iskovych]

[Filip Vandueren] “using \”these kinds of quotes\””
Thank you very much.
You helped me a lot.
[Filip Vandueren] “$.evalFile() was officially not supported”
May I ask why this is not suitable?
Can you advise another solution?
I am not very experienced in this.
I am trying to make a template for VideoHive.
If this does not work or there are errors, then they will not accept it from me.

I would like to ask one more question.
Can I find out the number of lines in the text?
I want to make the text align vertically if a new line is added to it.
If I write the expression text.sourceText.length, then I get the number of characters.
I would like to know the number of lines.
Thank.

[Vasyl Iskovych]

[Filip Vandueren] “using \”these kinds of quotes\””
Thank you very much.
You helped me a lot.
[Filip Vandueren] “$.evalFile() was officially not supported”
May I ask why this is not suitable?
Can you advise another solution?
I am not very experienced in this.
I am trying to make a template.
If this does not work or there are errors, then they will not accept it from me.

I would like to ask one more question.
Can I find out the number of lines in the text?
I want to make the text align vertically if a new line is added to it.
If I write the expression text.sourceText.length, then I get the number of characters.
I would like to know the number of lines.
Thank.

[Filip Vandueren]

on this page:
https://helpx.adobe.com/be_nl/after-effects/using/legacy-and-extend-script-engine.html#main-pars_header_328857513

it says it’s not supported, but the page may be out of Date,
or it may be unsupported but work anyway ☺
I can’t get it to work, but I am on Mac and maybe a different version of After Effects than you are.

Alternatively:
You can add .json or .csv files as footage inside of a project and get their sourcetext, sourceData, or JSON.parse() them.

a txt.json file could look like this:

{
"text_1": "My first text \r has multiple \n lines",
"text_2": "My second text \"using quotes\" "
}


If you make valid JSON-files, then there are methods to know how many members there are in the JSON object, like this:


Object.keys(footage("txt.json").sourceData).length;


if you want to know how many lines are in a string, you should count the number of \n or \r characters in it. My preferred method is like this:

myString = =footage("txt.json").sourceData.text_1;
lines = myString.split(/\r|\n/).length;


[Filip Vandueren]

To better address your last question, you were asking about text that is already in sourceText:

lines = text.sourceText.split(/\r|\n|\u0003/).length;

notice I also check for Unicode character 0003, which is “end of text”, and is what After Effects uses for soft line breaks (shift-enter) that start a new line, but not a new Paragraph.

[Vasyl Iskovych]

Thanks so much for your detailed answers.
Please tell me why the \n character is used?
I did not measure the difference if using \n or not using it.
Unfortunately, I did not find information on the Internet.
If possible, please tell me where to read about these values.
Thank.

[Filip Vandueren]

Just an old habit,

line feed \n
carriage return \r

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newline#Issues_with_different_newline_formats

[Vasyl Iskovych]

Thank you very much.
You helped me a lot.
But I want to ask more.
Hope this will be the last question.
I am trying to work with a .json file.
But when, after I accidentally corrupt the file, I cannot resume its work, even after I fix the file.
I tried to clear the memory, replace the footage, and even deleted and imported the file again. but he refuses to work.
Please watch the video to better understand what I mean.
And this does not always happen, but only sometimes.
I recorded a video several times to catch this error.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7U6soc6_sRM

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[Filip Vandueren]

Hmmm…
I see, I can replicate the same problem.

however:
I never add the JSON to my timelines. If you have huge datasets, it takes superlong and a lot of memory to create all those properties in the timeline.

I just get my data straight from the footage in the project-window wherever I need it.

footage("txt.json").sourceData.text_1;


If the source JSON breaks, the expression does give an error.
When the file is fixed and refreshed; it immediately works again.

[Vasyl Iskovych]

Thank you very much.
I thought that if the data is not displayed on the timeline, then they will not work in the expression.
I did not check it then.
Now I checked it and it works.
Thank you again.