Create new text layer above artboard

njcrowther22

Hi, pretty new to sketch plugins. I'm trying to create a new text layer according to the Sketch Developer API, but can't seem to get it to work.

Everything works until my UI message "Program gets here", but doesn't work after that.

Here's my code:
var sketch = require('sketch')
// documentation: https://developer.sketchapp.com/reference/api/
// var sketch = context.api()
const doc = sketch.getSelectedDocument()

export default function() {

const selection = doc.selectedLayers

selection.forEach((selected) => {
var artboardName = selected.name
var artboardWidth = selected.width

// sketch.UI.message("Program gets here")

var newText = new Text({
  text: 'artboardName',
  alignment: Text.Alignment.center
  // parent: selected[0].getParentArtboard(),
  // frame: {x: 10, y: 10, width: 200, height: 90}
})

sketch.UI.message("Doesn't get here")

})

}

Thanks for the help!

njcrowther22

Not exactly sure what I did, but this fixed it. Maybe I was missing a couple attributes.

const Text = require('sketch/dom').Text
try {
var newText = new Text({
parent: context.document.currentPage(),
text: artboardName,
name: artboardName,
style:{
alignment: 1,
textColor: '#000000'
}
// parent: selected[0].getParentArtboard(),
// frame: {x: 10, y: 10, width: 200, height: 90}
});
}
catch (error) {
console.error(error)
}

kevgski

Text wasn’t defined in your first code snippet.

Here is how you can create a text object (try it out with the script panel under Plugins -> Run Script…)

let sketch = require('sketch')
let Text = sketch.Text

let selectedDocument = sketch.getSelectedDocument()
let selectedPage = selectedDocument.selectedPage
// I’m assuming that there is an artboard on the selected page
let myArtboard = selectedPage.layers[0]

let myTextLayer = new Text({
  text: "Hi There",
  parent: myArtboard
})

Note that there isn’t much required for a text layer to be created. You’ll need to specify some text so that you can see the text layer. You also need to be sure to bind it to a parent layer in the document otherwise it will be just thrown away.

Lastly, welcome to the world of sketch plugins! I’d recommend checking out these articles on some of the basics of getting started:

njcrowther22

Thanks @kevgski!