Editing WoW:Earth (AddOn)/Using earth to create a QuestLog (section)

== Rendering Complex Trees == 

However, we're no slaves to simplicity, we're real coders, out to make life easier for our users. So we persist on, to make it even better. The first step is to convert our data-tree into an enhanced tree. The enhanced tree format for [[Earth (AddOn)]] is pretty complicated, but you can find out more about it by reading the EarthTree.lua file. 

Let's write a function to make an enhanced tree out of the simple one: 

 -- Converts Quest Trees into Enhanced Tree --
 function PartyQuests_ConvertQuestTreeToEnhancedTree(questTree, funcList)
 	local enhancedTree = {};
 	for zone,questList in questTree do
 		local zoneQuests = {};
 		zoneQuests.title = zone; 
 		zoneQuests.children = {};
 		
 		for k,quest in questList do 
 			local entry = {};
 
 			entry.title = quest.title; 
 			entry.right = quest.tag;
 			entry.tooltip = quest.level;
 			entry.onClick = function (a) Sea.io.printTable(a) end;
 			
 			table.insert(zoneQuests.children,entry);
 		end		
 		
 		zoneQuests.right = table.getn(zoneQuests.children); 
  		zoneQuests.tooltip = table.getn(zoneQuests.children);  
 
 		table.insert(enhancedTree,zoneQuests);
 	end 
 
 	return enhancedTree;
 end

[[Image:Earth_tutorial_2.jpg|thumb|Wow, it looks like a real quest log.]]

Then, change the function to use the LoadEnhanced call: 

 function PartyQuests_OnQuestClick(a) 
 	-- Do something here
 end

 function PartyQuests_LoadGui ()
 	local frame = PartyQuestsFrame;
 	local tree = PartyQuests_GetPlayerQuestTree();
 	local eTree = PartyQuests_ConvertQuestTreeToEnhancedTree(tree,
  	       {onClick=PartyQuests_OnQuestClick}
 	);
 	
 	-- Load up the data
 	EarthTree_LoadEnhanced(
 		getglobal(frame:GetName().."Tree"), 
 		eTree
 		);
 
 	-- Draw the data
 	EarthTree_UpdateFrame(
 		getglobal(frame:GetName().."Tree")
 		); 
 end

There. This is a lot to soak up, but basically, every entry in the [[Earth EnhancedTree]] format has an entry called "children", which determines what elements go inside of it. "title" is the main text, "right" is the extra text on the right, "tooltip" is what appears when you mouse it over and onClick is what happens when you click it! Here's the result: 

Ooh! That was nice. However, it was kind of bland. All that white. So lets spice it up with some color. We're going to use the function the default QuestLog uses to set its colors. That will ensure we don't need to change our code if Blizzard changes theirs.

[[Image:Earth_tutorial_3.jpg|thumb|Description]]

 -- Converts Quest Trees into Enhanced Tree --
 function PartyQuests_ConvertQuestTreeToEnhancedTree(questTree, funcList)
 	local enhancedTree = {};
 
 	-- Loop through the zone list
 	for zone,questList in questTree do
 		local zoneQuests = {};
 		zoneQuests.title = zone; 
 		zoneQuests.children = {};
 		
 		-- Loop through the quest list
 		for k,quest in questList do 
 			local entry = {}; 
 
 			entry.title = quest.title; 
 			entry.right = quest.tag;
 			entry.tooltip = quest.level;
 
 			-- Lets add some color
 			'''''entry.titleColor = GetDifficultyColor(quest.level);'''''
 			
 			-- Add the event handlers
 			entry.onClick = function (a) Sea.io.printTable(a) end;
 			
 			table.insert(zoneQuests.children,entry);
 		end		
 		
 		zoneQuests.right = table.getn(zoneQuests.children); 
 		zoneQuests.tooltip = table.getn(zoneQuests.children); 
 
 		table.insert(enhancedTree,zoneQuests);
 	end 
 
 	return enhancedTree;
 end

Doesn't that look pretty? But it still not enough. We need to complete this masterpiece by improving upon the original. Let's make use of that spiffy localization.lua file. Open it up and add the following: 

 PARTYQUESTS_QUEST_TITLE = "\[%s\] %s";
 PARTYQUESTS_QUEST_TITLE_TAG = "(%s)";

These are a couple of formatting strings that will help us make the Enhanced Tree look even better. "string.format" is another really nice function, that you can find more about over at http://www.lua.org, check out their documentation. These strings allow us to format those tags we'd like changed very quickly. Plus, if a different country prefers to use a different format, we can update it just by changing the localization.lua file. 

[[Image:Earth_tutorial_4.jpg|thumb|Beautiful. Simply Beautiful!]]

 -- Converts Quest Trees into Enhanced Tree --
 function PartyQuests_ConvertQuestTreeToEnhancedTree(questTree, funcList)
 	local enhancedTree = {}; 
 
 	-- Loop through the zone list
 	for zone,questList in questTree do
 		local zoneQuests = {};
 		zoneQuests.title = zone; 
 		zoneQuests.children = {};
 		
 		-- Loop through the quest list
 		for k,quest in questList do 
 			local entry = {}; 
 			
 			-- Add the format strings here:
 			
 			-- Format it into [12] Quest of Danger
 			'''''entry.title = string.format(PARTYQUESTS_QUEST_TITLE, quest.level,  quest.title); '''''
 
 			-- Pretty up the (Elite)
 			'''''if ( quest.tag ) then 
 				entry.right = string.format(PARTYQUESTS_QUEST_TITLE_TAG, quest.tag); 
 			end'''''
 
 			-- Add a simple tooltip
 			entry.tooltip = quest.level;
 
 			-- Lets add some color
 			entry.titleColor = GetDifficultyColor(quest.level);
 			
 			-- Add the event handlers
 			entry.onClick = function (a) Sea.io.printTable(a) end;
 			
 			table.insert(zoneQuests.children,entry);
 		end		
 		
 		zoneQuests.right = table.getn(zoneQuests.children); 
 		zoneQuests.tooltip = table.getn(zoneQuests.children); 
 
 		table.insert(enhancedTree,zoneQuests);
 	end
 
 	return enhancedTree;
 end

Beautiful. A work of art and it only took us about an hour to do. If you'd like to extend this work, you can set all of those onClick entries to do something more advanced than just print out a message. Likewise, you can make checkboxes show up by adding "checked=true" to each entry.