Overview

To write modular code, a system may expose its interface in the form of virtual functions, events or filters.

• virtual functions: allows a derived class to hook the input and output of a single function in the base class.
• events: feeds input to external functions when certain things happened. Events only hooks the input without providing an output.
• filters: allows external functions to form input-output chains to modify data at any point of execution.

Use whatever patterns to allow external modifications to the input-output of your modular code.

Filters

Filters is a design pattern of input-output chains. Please see script/ide/System/Core/Filters.lua for detailed usage.

You can simply apply a named filters at any point of execution in your code to allow other users to modify your data.

For example, one can turn data = data; into an equivalent filter, like below

data = GameLogic.GetFilters():apply_filters("my_data", data, some_parameters);

The above code does nothing until some other modules add_filters to "my_data".

Each filter function takes the output of the previous filter function as its first parameter, all other input parameters are shared by all filter functions, like below

F1(input, ...)-->F2(F1_output, ...)-->F3(F2_output, ...)-->F3_output

Filters is the recommended way for plugin/app developers to extend or modify paracraft.

Click here to see all Paracraft Filters