New to Creating Addons

[DJMcCarthy12]

Hey guys, I'm new to creating addons, but I've done some reading and I'm pretty sure I'm ready to go (I have other programming experience) - I just have one question.

How do I access preexisting information about a character in-game? i.e. the player level, class, health, item level, etc. - is this type of information stored in global variables somewhere?

Thanks in advance!

DJ

[Haleth]

UnitLevel("player")
UnitClass("player")
UnitHealth("player")
GetAverageItemLevel()

You can find many of these here, for example. As you learn to make addons you'll remember the most common ones; others you can just look for in the relevant categories.

[Phanx]

I find the single-page list of global functions to be much easier to use than browsing categories. If I want to find the function that tells me a unit's name, for example, I don't have to think about which category that's probably in; I can just use my browser's find-in-page feature to search for "name".

[Seerah]

Well, it's probably going to be in the "Unit functions" category. You can still use your browser's find feature on the categorized list. A categorized list is a whole lot less daunting for a beginner.

[Phanx]

True, but it's not always obvious which category the function you want belongs to, and the global list is helpful for finding out if there even is a function for what you want.

[Seerah]

Again, you can still use Ctrl-F on the category list page. All the categories are listed on one page, after all, they're just organized. Then, if you find what you're looking for, you can see at a glance all the other related functions.

[Rainrider]

Also keep in mind that all the available WoW API documentation is not officially supported by Blizzard but rather community driven. Thus information is not always up-to-date or accurate. What you can do is use the /dump command in-game to find out if the number or order of return values has changed or/and call the function wrongly with activated lua errors to get a short usage description.

[myrroddin]

You can also use EventTracker to glean information about undocumented Events. I found editing EventTracker_events.lua more effective than the slash commands, but your results may vary.

[Resike]

Originally Posted by myrroddin You can also use EventTracker to glean information about undocumented Events. I found editing EventTracker_events.lua more effective than the slash commands, but your results may vary.

This addon seems just like the blizzard built in "/eventtrace" command one.

[myrroddin]

It is; however, it is easier to read the results. Just my opinion, of course!

[Resike]

Originally Posted by myrroddin It is; however, it is easier to read the results. Just my opinion, of course!

Well, if you're a rookie you pretty much know all the events what you gonna need. JK just use CLEU.

[Phanx]

Originally Posted by Rainrider What you can do is use the /dump command in-game to find out if the number or order of return values has changed or/and call the function wrongly with activated lua errors to get a short usage description.

It might be easier to look at the Blizzard UI code, so you can see how the values are actually used, as it's not always clear what a long list of true/false or number values actually mean.

You can look at it online, or extract a local copy from your installed game client.