Making Illustrator layer combination script - loops

Question

I need to make a jsx script for illustrator. I need to a script that do the following:
Take all sublayers from main layers, and recursive make layer combinations.
Layer hierarchi would be like this:
Main layer 1
White text
Black text
Purple text
Main layer 2
Red background
Green background
Blue background
E.g.:
Red background + white text
Red background + Black text
Red background + Red text
Green background + white text
Green background + Black text
Green background + Red text
Blue background + white text
Blue background + Black text
Blue background + Red text
So I would like to recursively go through the layers sublayers, and make combination from those. There could be many layers with sublayers in them, this is just an example.
I hope all this makes sense.

Answer 1

As far as I can tell it doesn't even need any recursion. You can just copy all the items from a top layer to the next bottom layer and remove the top layer afterward. And repeat it while there is more than one layer in the document.
var doc = app.activeDocument;
// repeat the function for two top layers while there is more that one layer
while (doc.layers.length > 1) main();
// paste every sublayer of a top layer into the syblayers of the second layer
function main() {
// top layer (source) and its sublayers
var src_layer = doc.layers[0];
var src_sublayers = src_layer.layers;
var src_sublayers_names = [];
for (var i=0; i<src_sublayers.length; i++) src_sublayers_names.push(src_sublayers[i].name);
// second layer (destination) and its sublayers
var dest_layer = doc.layers[1];
var dest_sublayers = dest_layer.layers;
var dest_sublayers_names = [];
for (var i=0; i<dest_sublayers.length; i++) dest_sublayers_names.push(dest_sublayers[i].name);
// put objects from the source sublayers into the destination sublayers
for (var i=0; i<dest_sublayers_names.length; i++) {
var dest_sublayer = dest_sublayers[dest_sublayers_names[i]];
for (var j=0; j<src_sublayers_names.length; j++) {
var src_sublayer = src_layer.layers[src_sublayers_names[j]];
// select all items on the source sublayer and the destination sublayer
src_sublayer.hasSelectedArtwork = true;
dest_sublayer.hasSelectedArtwork = true;
app.copy();
app.selection = null;
// make a new destination sublayer and paste the items into it
var new_dest_sublayer = dest_sublayers.add();
new_dest_sublayer.name = (dest_sublayer.name + ' + ' + src_sublayer.name);
app.activeDocument.activeLayer = new_dest_sublayer;
app.executeMenuCommand('pasteFront');
app.selection = null;
}
}
// remove the source layer with its sublayers
src_layer.remove();
// remove the old destination sublayers
for (var i=0; i<dest_sublayers_names.length; i++) {
dest_layer.layers[dest_sublayers_names[i]].remove();
}
}
Start (3 layers, 8 sublayers):
The result (18 combinations):
If you want to save all the sublayers as separate AI files here is the function:
function save_sublayers() {
var doc = app.activeDocument;
var sublayers = doc.layers[0].layers;
for (var i=0; i<sublayers.length; i++) {
var sublayer = sublayers[i];
sublayer.hasSelectedArtwork = true;
app.copy();
app.selection = null;
var file = File(doc.path + '/' + sublayer.name + '.ai');
var new_doc = app.documents.add();
app.paste();
new_doc.saveAs(file);
new_doc.close(SaveOptions.DONOTSAVECHANGES);
}
}
You can call the function save_sublayers() after the line while (doc.layers.length > 1) main();
It saves all items from the sublayers of the first (and only) layer into separate AI files into the parent folder of current document. File names are the same as sublayers names.