Simulating events

[Santiclause]

I can't remember if I asked this here before, but it's just something of an idle curiosity which I never managed to sate. I was making this addon where one of the things necessary to make it work well was simulating a UNIT_AURA event for all registered frames, to trick the frames in to thinking that a unit had received or lost a new aura. I think the problem I was encountering was figuring out the proper unitID. Even if I faked a UNIT_AURA event for the "target" UnitID, it wouldn't update, say, the focus frame, even if my focus WAS my target. Something like that.
Anyway, is there any way of simulating an event that's better than what I'm doing?


I'll just copy+paste the whole ugly lump of code I was using:

function FakeAuras_SimulateEvent(event, unit)
   local frames = {GetFramesRegisteredForEvent(event)}
   --God, I really have no idea how to do this in a better way. That's what I get for trying to support GUIDs and actual names.
   if not UnitExists(unit) then
      if unit == UnitName("target") or unit == UnitGUID("target") then
         unit = "target"
      elseif unit == UnitName("mouseover") or unit == UnitGUID("mouseover") then
         unit = "mouseover"
      elseif unit == UnitName("targettarget") or unit == UnitGUID("targettarget") then
         unit = "targettarget"
      elseif unit == UnitName("focus") or unit == UnitGUID("focus") then
         unit = "focus"
      elseif unit == UnitName("focustarget") or unit == UnitGUID("focustarget") then
         unit = "focustarget"
      else
         unit = "player"
      end
      local s
      for i=1,40 do
         s = format(i<=4 and "party%s" or "raid%s",i)
         if unit == UnitName(s) or unit == UnitGUID(s) then
            unit = s
            break
         end
      end
   end
   for _,frame in ipairs(frames) do
      local f = function(u) frame:GetScript("OnEvent")(frame, event, u) end
      --This is disgusting, but I have no idea how else to do it. I wish there was just some sort of SimulateEvent() API.
      --This doesn't even begin to cover all the possibilities anyway :\
      f("target")
      f("player")
      f("mouseover")
      f("targettarget")
      f("focus")
      f("focustarget")
      f(unit)
   end
end

I'm not exactly sure why I had it setting unit to the target through focustarget things, when I just end up manually calling those UnitIDs anyway - possibly to avoid errors if I try to call a frame's event handler on an un-matched GUID or unit name. Don't quite remember. :\

[Rilgamon]

Not sure if I understand you right. But your units listen to the events
and have a function set.

frame:SetScript("OnEvent", eventHandler)

Why not just call the eventHandler with the proper args ?

Something like

eventHandler(frame, event, unitid)

Edit: doh ... I misread your code. Now I see that you're doing this

[nightcracker]

If you're trying to transform an unit GUID to an unit ID I would suggest you take a look at my lib, LibGUIDMap. http://github.com/nightcracker/ncUI/...libguidmap.lua

[Santiclause]

The problem was that I wanted to make fake buffs or debuffs appear on unitframes or in your buff list or whatever. I seem to remember that as I was doing this, I thought that it'd be a simple matter to just loop through all the registered frames for UNIT_AURA, and call their event handlers with the given unitID. This didn't work, entirely. I mean, sure, if I sent "target" it would update the target unitframe, but it wouldn't update the targettarget, or the focus, or the player, or the focustarget, et cetera. I have no idea how the real UNIT_AURA events manage to update all the appropriate frames, and I'd like to know how it does (instead of this "throw ****ing EVERYTHING at it" approach that I'm using)

[Shadowed]

Simulating events is ugly in general, especially if you are trying to simulate it on addons that you didn't make (Which is what you are doing from the sounds of it?). Addons monitor for specific units, and the game sends updates for each of those. If you focus then target yourself, you'll get 3 sets of aura events, one for player, target, focus. If you want to simulate an event you have to essentially fire it for all the real units: player, pet, focus, target, arena#, party#, raid#, raidpet#, think I missed a few more.

[Santiclause]

Originally Posted by Shadowed Simulating events is ugly in general, especially if you are trying to simulate it on addons that you didn't make (Which is what you are doing from the sounds of it?). Addons monitor for specific units, and the game sends updates for each of those. If you focus then target yourself, you'll get 3 sets of aura events, one for player, target, focus. If you want to simulate an event you have to essentially fire it for all the real units: player, pet, focus, target, arena#, party#, raid#, raidpet#, think I missed a few more.

Yeah, the game sends updates for each of them - but how does it KNOW which ones are necessary? If I could just figure that out, it would be better, I think.

[Shadowed]

Originally Posted by Santiclause Yeah, the game sends updates for each of them - but how does it KNOW which ones are necessary? If I could just figure that out, it would be better, I think.

The event system is "dumb," all it does is fire events that frames registered for. You could only use UNIT_AURA updates from the player, and you'll get events for every other unit's aura update, which is why you have to always check what unit fired an unit event before processing to make sure it's the one you want.

[nightcracker]

If you want to fire an event for every single frame, use EnumerateFrames().