WoW API: GetAuctionItemInfo

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Revision as of 18:42, 10 March 2008 by WoWWiki>Mikk (→‎Notes: Explain that resolution is cached)
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WoW API < GetAuctionItemInfo

Retrieves info about one item in the current retrieved list of items from the Auction House.

name, texture, count, quality, canUse, level, 
minBid, minIncrement, buyoutPrice, bidAmount, 
highBidder, owner  = GetAuctionItemInfo("type", index);

Parameters

Arguments

type
String - One of the following:
  • "list" - An item up for auction, the "Browse" tab in the dialog.
  • "bidder" - An item the player has bid on, the "Bids" tab in the dialog.
  • "owner" - An item the player has up for auction, the "Auctions" tab in the dialog.
index
Integer - The index of the item in the list to retrieve info from (normally 1-50, inclusive)

Returns

name
a string containing the name of the item
texture
a string containing the name of the texture of the item
count
a number containing the number of items in the auction item
quality
an index into the ITEM_QUALITY_COLORS array
canUse
a boolean, true if the user can use the item, false if not
level
a number referring to the level required to use the item
minBid
the starting bid price
minIncrement
the minimum amount of item at which to put the next bid
buyoutPrice
zero if no buy out, otherwise it contains the buyout price of the auction item
bidAmount
the current highest bid, zero if no one has bid yet
highBidder
a boolean that is true if the current player is the highest bidder, otherwise nil
owner
the player that is selling the item

Example

local name, texture, count, quality, canUse, level, 
minBid, minIncrement, buyoutPrice, bidAmount, 
highBidder, owner = GetAuctionItemInfo("owner", 1);

Result

Retrieves info about the first item in the list of your currently auctioned items.

Notes

Note that the "owner" field can be nil. This happens because the auction listing internally contains player GUIDs rather than names, and the WoW client does not query the server for names until GetAuctionItemInfo() is actually called for the item, and the result takes one RTT to arrive. The GUID->name mapping is then stored in a name resolution cache, which gets cleared upon logout (not UI reload).

Blizzard's standard auction house view overcomes this problem by reacting to AUCTION_ITEM_LIST_UPDATE and re-querying the items.

However, this event-driven approach does not really work for e.g. scanner engines. There, the correct solution is to re-query items with nil owners for a short time (a low number of seconds). There IS a possibility that it NEVER returns something - this happens when someone puts something up for auction and then deletes his character.


Also note that these GUID-to-name queries cause client-to-server bandwidth; 14 bytes each (WoW 2.3.2). For a normal 50-item page this is of course negligeable, but for a full-AH scan on a medium-size server, you easily generate enough traffic to disconnect yourself if you do not throttle the rate at which you send queries. See ChatThrottleLib for information on client-to-server bandwidth.