WoW API type: ItemLink

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An ItemLink is a string that can be processed by the WoW UI to produce UI item 'link' text for a game item. ItemLinks are ItemStrings with additional formatting to make in-game text controls display them as clickable hyperlinks. ItemLinks are returned various functions, including GetAuctionItemLink(), GetContainerItemLink(), GetInventoryItemLink().

Format

• "|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:7073:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0" - The embedded item string. See itemString. Changed in 5.0.4.
• "|h" - End of link, text follows
• "[Broken Fang]" - The actual text displayed
• "|h" - End of hyperlink
• "|r" - Restores color to normal

|cff9d9d9d|Hitem:7073:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:80:0:0|h[Broken Fang]|h|r

Summary

Example

local itemString = string.match(itemLink, "item[%-?%d:]+")

This example extracts the itemString from a given itemLink using the string.match regex Lua function.

Details

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*):?(%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.

Simple ingame item look-up

For calling up an item in the game that is not available via shift+left-click (such as something on the AH or in the professions tab), follow these very easy steps:

• Look up the item on wowhead
• Click on the "Links" button in the top right of the item page
• Select the "Ingame link" section (usually already selected); copy the information
• Enter the game and paste the information into the chat window
• A clickable link for that item should appear

Notes

• The format of the link is similar for enchant, spell and quest links, with merely the "itemstring" changing. See spellString, enchantString and questString
• Patch 5.0.4 - changed the number of itemString parameters from 10 to 11

See

• itemString
• GetContainerItemLink()
• game item (item)
• questString, spellString, enchantString