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• • April 27, 2011 at 6:14 am #59419
    BenMajor

    Participant

    Hello,

    I am currently working on a new book which comprises a large amount of data. The data already exists in a MySQL database, and I'm fairly certain that I can import the information relatively easily into Adobe InDesign using the XML file format.

    However, my problem is that each item in the database has a unique number (five digits in length). The last two digits of this number are used to colour a simple bar code as follows:

    Top Row > Penultimate Digit
    Second Row > Last Digit
    Third Row > Penultimate Digit

    The digits 0 to 9 are assigned with a specific colour and the bars are coloured accordingly. For example, the number 43256 would result in the barcode looking lik RED GREEN RED.

    Does anyone know how I might be able to auotmate this process using InDesign? The database contains more than 2,500 items, and I do not want to manually go through each one and assign the colours to the barcode.

    Any thoughts and comments would be most welcome.

    Thanks and kind regards,
    Ben.

  • April 27, 2011 at 6:20 am #59420
    David Blatner

    Keymaster

    Maybe you could do something clever with grep styles. See:

    https://creativepro.com/ins…..styles.php

    or

    https://creativepro.com/5-c…..styles.php

  • April 28, 2011 at 5:33 am #59426
    BenMajor

    Participant

    Thanks for your help, David. I think that is the best way to go.

    Unfortunately, I'm relatively new to using GREP styles in InDesign. I wonder if you could give me a few pointers as to how this could be achieved?

    Thanks,
    Ben.

  • April 28, 2011 at 5:40 am #59427
    BenMajor

    Participant

    Actually, on second thoughts I think it might be easier if I use PHP to output the XML. This way, I don't need to use GREP styles in InDesign to determine which colour each row would be. For example, I could create an XML file which is structured as follows:

    <item>

    12345

    <description>My Item 1</description>
    <row1Col>red</row1Col>
    <row2Col>blue</row2Col>
    <row3Col>red</row3Col>
    </item>

    My question now is, can I use the value from the rowNCol nodes as the name of the stlye to be applied to each Table Cell?

    Thanks,
    Ben.

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