InDesign DOM APIs

InDesign APIs (aka Document Object Model DOM or OMV) is used to create and modify the application document and content.

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To access the InDesign DOM APIs from v18.4 onwards, use

const myInDesign = require("indesign");
const app = myInDesign.app;

DOM version

DOM versioning refers to the specific version of InDesign Document Object Model. By specifying a version, you can ensure that your script/plugin remains forward compatible, which means it will work with newer versions of InDesign, even if DOM has changed in subsequent releases.

The available DOM versions as of today are 3.0, 4.0, 5.0, 6.0, 7.0, 7.5, 8.0, 9.0, 10.0, 10.1, 10.2, 11.0, 11.2, 11.3, 11.4, 12.0, 12.1, 13.0, 13.1, 14.0, 15.0, 15.1, 16.0, 16.1, 16.2, 17.0, 18.0

To know which version of DOM API your app is currently using, you can use

const myInDesign = require("indesign");
const app = myInDesign.app;
console.log(app.scriptPreferences.version);

To switch to a particular version of DOM API, use

const myInDesign = require("indesign-16.1");

The above will make sure that going forward you will be using v16.1 DOM APIs.

NOTE that if you retrieved a specific DOM version (let's assume 'A') and then did require("indesign"), it will fetch the same DOM version 'A'. For example,

const inDesignAppV17 = require("indesign-17.0").app;
const inDesignApp = require("indesign").app;

console.log(`Versions: ${inDesignAppV17.scriptPreferences.version} and ${inDesignApp.scriptPreferences.version} will be v17.0`);

Also note that you cannot work with two different DOM versions at the same time. require("indesign"); assumes that there will be no further change in the DOM version. In the below example, the object inDesignV17 will be 'undefined'.

const inDesign = require("indesign");
const inDesignV17 = require("indesign-17.0");

Once you have the right DOM API version, use the API reference to access available objects, methods etc.