Welcome to episode 14 of the After Effects ExtendScript Training series. This week we are gonna focus on how to process text strings.

In previous episodes we have been retrieving various information from our project, anything from file paths to layer names and even property values. Now sometimes you may want to extract or alter that information for various reasons. Something like grabbing only a file extension from it's name, separating long text strings into individual words, replacing a specific term or letter, capitalizing all characters, etc… We've already learned and used the replace method a number of times, so I wanted to show you a few more common methods that you'll likely use a lot. This is also not a full list of all available options, so definitely check out some Javascript resources like W3Schools online to find more.

If you missed any of the previous episodes in this series, follow the links below.

Previous episodes in the series:

Episode 1 (Intro)

Episode 2 (Javascript Basics p1)

Episode 3 (Javascript Basics p2)

Episode 4 (After Effects Object Model structure overview / Script Preparation and development tips / Single Item Access of various project items, comps and layers)

Episode 5 (Access Renderqueue items, output modules and file paths / Multiple item access of project items, comps and layers / Batch change all renderqueue items file paths)

Episode 6 (Collecting data into an Array() / Changing values / Various tips)

Episode 7 (Create new comps and folders / Create Null, Solid, and Text layers)

Episode 8 (Create multiple comps of various sizes / Use Undo group / Add solids to match each comp / Various tips)

Episode 9 (Globally change blue solids to red / Replace solid name blue with red)

Episode 10 (Build a custom function to collect all CompItem objects / Modify function to dynamically allow for choice of CompItem, FolderItem or FootageItem)

Episode 11 (Build floating GUI)

Episode 12 Part 1 & 2 (Build dockable/floating combo GUI)

Episode 13 (ExtendScript Developer Utility script / Retrieve list of project item footage file paths)

In this episode:
– Text string methods for processing text