WoW:ItemLink

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itemLinks are returned by several functions, e.g. GetAuctionItemLink(), GetContainerItemLink(), GetInventoryItemLink(), etc.

In essence, they are itemStrings with additional formatting to make in-game text controls display them as clickable hyperlinks.

|cff9d9d9d|Hitem:7073:0:0:0:0:0:0:0|h[Broken Fang]|h|r

Broken up in its components:

• "|cff9d9d9d" – Colorizes the link with a medium grey color (hex color code)
  • The first two characters after pipe-c may be the alpha level, where ff is fully opaque.
  • The next three sets of two characters represent the red, green, and blue levels, just like HTML.
• "|H" – "Hyperlink link data starts here"
• "item:7073:0:0:0:0:0:0:0" – Read more at itemString.
• "|h" – "End of link, text follows"
• "[Broken Fang]" – The actual text displayed
• "|h" – "End of hyperlink"
• "|r" – Restores color to normal

You can extract the itemString from a given itemLink with the following pattern:

local found, _, itemString = string.find(itemLink, "^|c%x+|H(.+)|h%[.*%]")

Note: The format of the link is similar for enchant, spell and quest links, with merely the "itemstring" changing. See spellString, enchantString and questString

To obtain all the data within a hyperlink, you can use the following:

local _, _, Color, Ltype, Id, Enchant, Gem1, Gem2, Gem3, Gem4, Suffix, Unique, LinkLvl, Name = string.find(itemLink, "|?c?f?f?(%x*)|?H?([^:]*):?(%d+):?(%d*):?(%d*):?(%d*):?(%d*):?(%d*):?(%-?%d*):?(%-?%d*):?(%d*)|?h?%[?([^%[%]]*)%]?|?h?|?r?")

Note that this will accept any hyperlink (item/spell/quest/talent/achievement/tradeskill/etc), it will take itemstrings alone, or even just a single number.

Printing links for debug

Printing out the contents of an item link is perhaps not so obvious; displaying it anywhere in-game will just show you a clickable link. Reformat it slightly to ruin the escape sequences and you'll see what it really looks like:

link = GetContainerItemLink(0, 1);
printable = gsub(link, "\124", "\124\124");
ChatFrame1:AddMessage("Here's what it really looks like: \"" .. printable .. "\"");

"124" is the ascii value of the "|" character. If you are writing this in a regular .lua file, feel free to go ahead and just use "|" and "||". However, if you're typing it in an in-game editor, it's better to use the ascii code escape to avoid problems.