1.5

Tip
When using the drag-and-drop method to insert data fields in a template:
l
Press the Alt key while dragging, to wrap the placeholder in a span, give the span
an ID and have that ID used as the script's selector.
l
Press the Ctrl key while dragging, to wrap the placeholder in an absolute
positioned box (a div) at the cursor position. A unique ID is assigned to the box and
used as the script's selector.
Avoid DOM manipulations
The Scripting API of the Designer is a very powerful tool to manipulate and personalize your
document. But keep in mind that DOM manipulation commands like append(), prepend(),
before() and after() are resource intensive.
Try avoiding DOM modifications, especially within loops. Storing the content in a variable and
appending the information after the loop is more efficient: this way, the template will be touched
only once.
Example
The following example loads a snippet into a variable and uses the find() and text() commands
of the Designer scripting API.
var labelElm = loadhtml('snippets/label.html');
for(var i = 0; i < record.tables.products.length; i++) {
var label = labelElm.clone();
label.find('@ProductLabel@').text(record.tables.products
[i].ProductDescription);
results.after(label);
}
What's wrong with this code is that it inserts the personalized information within the loop. The
after() command runs as many times as there are records in the detail table 'products'.
The script below is much more efficient: it adds the personalized content to a string called
labelStr and only calls after() after the for loop.
Page 230