InDesign Automated Tests

Question

Is there a way to create automated tests for InDesign in Windows? For example:

• Open InDesign
• Open a Document
• Run a JSX Script
• Close file
• Close InDesign

From what I've researched I didn't find an straight forward way to do it. What I found was a mix of languages. VBScript with JSX. I had this with AppleScript instead of VBScript but it was messy. It could crash at any moment without an easy way of recover it.

Answer 1

I was able to create an automated test using C#. Before I start I needed to do a couple of steps in order to have a good environment to develop.

This is the setup I used:

• Windows 10 Pro
• Visual Studio 2017 Pro (Trial)
• InDesign CC 2017

Now the steps of how I did it:

• Start InDesign as admin to create a file so I could use as reference in my Visual Studio Project
• Create a new Console project (This was my case)
• Add the COM Reference to the project. In the tab COM, you will find a reference to an Indesign tlb file

Now to create an Indesign instance I used the following code:

Type inDesignAppType = Type.GetTypeFromProgID("InDesign.Application.CC.2017");
InDesign.Application myInDesign = (InDesign.Application)Activator.CreateInstance(inDesignAppType);

After this, to run an InDesign script I used:

String myString = myInDesign.DoScript("return \"My String\"", InDesign.idScriptLanguage.idJavascript, new object[] {""});

I hope my solution helps someone else.