WoW API type: SpellLink

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spellLinks are returned by several functions, e.g. GetSpellLink(), etc.

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

|cff71d5ff|Hspell:10060|h[Power Infusion]|h|r

Broken up in its components:

• "|cff71d5ff" – Colorizes the link with a blue/cyan color (all spell links are blue)
  • 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"
• "spell:10060" – Read more at spellString.
• "|h" – "End of link, text follows"
• "[Power Infusion]" – The actual text displayed
• "|h" – "End of hyperlink"
• "|r" – Restores color to normal

You can extract the spellString from a given spellLink with the following pattern:

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

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

Printing links for debug

Printing out the contents of an spell 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 = GetSpellLink(spell);
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.