WoW:Creating simple pop-up dialog boxes: Difference between revisions

{{UIHowTo}}

through the mail, renaming a pet, and so forth. This tutorial describes how you can use the StaticPopup code to display simple dialogs in your own addon.

   button2 = "No",

   OnAccept = function()

   end,

   timeout = 0,

* ''text'' - This is the text inside the dialog box.  For example, "Looting this item will bind it to you."

* ''timeout'' - After this many seconds, the dialog will go away.  If the entry has an <tt>OnCancel</tt> function, it will be called with "timeout" as the reason.  Dialogs which do not expire should set this to zero.

* ''whileDead'' - Set to true if this dialog can be shown while the player is a ghost.  You probably want to do this.

* ''hideOnEscape'' - Set to true if hitting the Escape key should be treated like clicking button2.  You probably want to do this.

Note that this guide refers to setting boolean options to 'true' or 'false'; earlier editions used '1' and 'nil' for the same purposes.  The fact of the matter is that you can set those options to anything which evaluates to true-valued or false-valued results according to Lua:  'nil' and 'false' are false-valued, anything else (including 0 and "") is true-valued.  A lot of original Blizzard code was written for an earlier version of Lua, which did not have formal boolean types.  Use whatever makes the most sense for your addon.

To display the dialog, call <tt>StaticPopup_Show</tt> with the name of the entry:

The dialog will be put together and displayed, and the function returns as soon as the dialog is shown.

are any problems, it returns nil.

This function has two more optional arguments, see [[#Dialog_Text_Parameters|Dialog Text Parameters]] below.

== Hiding the popup ==

To make the dialog disappear without having a user click it, call <tt>StaticPopup_Hide</tt> with the name of the entry:

== Advanced setup ==

* ''OnCancel'' - This function can take up to two arguments, both optional.  The first is used the same way as the first parameter in OnAccept (whatever that may actually be).  The second is a string describing the reason the popup was cancelled; the game will pass this as required:

  end

== Optional features ==

* ''button3''/''OnAlt'' - You can set text for a third button to appear, and its corresponding callback.  The button is placed ''between'' the first two buttons.  (To remember this, think of how mouse buttons are labeled.)

  StaticPopupDialogs["EXAMPLE_CTRA_READY"] = {

and called via

(Note:  the above was written before the 1.11 game patch added a builtin ready check.  While ready checks no longer need

   OnAccept = function (self, data, data2)

   end

The dialog's fields "data" and "data2" are passed as additional arguments to OnAccept.  The "data" field is passed to OnCancel and OnAlt (the function called if button3 is set), but not "data2".  They are also accessible through the dialog itself, as ''self.data'' and ''self.data2''.  In this example they are strings, but they can be of any type including tables.

If you need to manipulate any of the dialog's visual elements, most of them are directly accessible as table fields of the dialog, so you do not need to use an expensive sequence of ''getglobal(self:GetName().."Something")''.  For example, ''dialog.button1'' points to the first button.  See the StaticPopup.xml file's various OnLoad sections for the full list.

== Notes and observations ==

* Creating a static popup with an editbox and only one button will cause the button and the editbox to overlap. Having more than one button will get the desired behavior. (Tested on 2.4.1)

* While creating your popup entries, you will probably be doing a lot of UI reloading.  Extract the <tt>[[FrameXML/DebugUI.xml]]</tt> file from the default UI, copy it into your addon folder, and add it to your .toc file.  This has two effects:  it starts verbose logging into FrameXML.log, and it adds a "Reload UI" button to your screen.  Very handy timesaver.  :-)