Exchange data between players through an AddOn

[DaKu2k10]

Hi,

i am getting into AddOn Dev with Lua. First of all i want to know what is possible in general. I have seen lots of AddOns that deal with improving the gameplay experience for a player, e.g. the Omen Threat Meter, which only operate with local data. What i am curious about is if it is possible to share data between AddOns.

I am trying to give an example:

My Addon has extracted some game data (like the names of the players i have met) that ist stored in a lua table.
Now i want to make this lua table available for every other user who uses My Addon

Is there a way of doing that?

Thanks

[cloudwolf]

It depends on waht you mean by sharing the info. If you want everyone who downloads your addon to get everything you added then it has to be saved in a hardcoded way. If you want to transfer data/share it with people using the same addon while they are both online this is done through a custom addon channel and specific commands (i don't know too much about this) but it only sends the info when the players online and only works for people in raid/party/guild. so there are limitations.

[Akryn]

http://www.wowwiki.com/API_SendAddonMessage

or create a custom chat channel and then hide it, for things that addon messages can't do.

[DaKu2k10]

Originally Posted by cloudwolf It depends on waht you mean by sharing the info. If you want everyone who downloads your addon to get everything you added then it has to be saved in a hardcoded way.

What do you mean by hardcoded? I know that it is possible to save variables to a file (like xml for example). But is it possible to store and retrieve data from a database like mysql or something.

Thanks for your help

[Xrystal]

Nope, unfortunately or fortunately when you look at it security wise, addons cannot access anything outside of the game.

You would have to 1) Write to the normal savedgame variables 2) use an external program to extract the information and format it into a format you need 3) import the reformatted data into external database.

Step 1 is handled within the game itself via the addon.
Step 2 and 3 can only be handled outside of the game after the user has logged out and the saved variables have been written. Although I have seen reloadUIs writing the saved variables too.