minetest_modding_book/_en/players/chat.md

title	layout	root	idx	description	redirect_from
Chat and Commands	default	../../	4.2	Registering a chatcommand and handling chat messages with register_on_chat_message	/en/chapters/chat.html

Introduction

Mods can interact with player chat, including sending messages, intercepting messages and registering chat commands.

• Sending Messages to All Players
• Sending Messages to Specific Players
• Chat Commands
• Complex Subcommands
• Intercepting Messages

Sending Messages to All Players

To send a message to every player in the game, call the chat_send_all function.

{% highlight lua %} minetest.chat_send_all("This is a chat message to all players") {% endhighlight %}

Here is an example of how this appears in-game:

<player1> Look at this entrance
This is a chat message to all players
<player2> What about it?

The message appears on a separate line to distinguish it from in-game player chat.

Sending Messages to Specific Players

To send a message to a specific player, call the chat_send_player function:

{% highlight lua %} minetest.chat_send_player("player1", "This is a chat message for player1") {% endhighlight %}

This message displays in the same manner as messages to all players, but is only visible to the named player, in this case player1.

Older Mods

Occasionally you'll see mods where the chat_send_player function includes a boolean:

{% highlight lua %} minetest.chat_send_player("player1", "This is a server message", true) minetest.chat_send_player("player1", "This is a server message", false) {% endhighlight %}

The boolean is no longer used, and has no affect ^[commit].

Chat Commands

To register a chat command, for example /foo, use register_chatcommand:

{% highlight lua %} minetest.register_chatcommand("foo", { privs = { interact = true }, func = function(name, param) return true, "You said " .. param .. "!" end }) {% endhighlight %}

Calling /foo bar will display You said bar! in the chat console.

You can restrict which players are able to run commands:

{% highlight lua %} privs = { interact = true }, {% endhighlight %}

This means only players with the interact privilege can run the command. Other players will see an error message informing them of which privilege they're missing. If the player has the necessary privileges, the command will run and the message will be sent:

{% highlight lua %} return true, "You said " .. param .. "!" {% endhighlight %}

This returns two values, a boolean which shows the command succeeded and the chat message to send to the player.

A player name, instead of a player object, is passed because the player might not actually be in-game, but may be running commands from IRC. Due to this, you should not assume minetest.get_player_by_name, or any other function that requires an in-game player, will work in a chat command call back.

minetest.show_formspec also won't work when a command is run from IRC, so you should provide a text only version. For example, the email mod allows both /inbox to show a formspec, and /inbox text to send information to chat.

Complex Subcommands

It is often required to make complex chat commands, such as:

• /msg <to> <message>
• /team join <teamname>
• /team leave <teamname>
• /team list

This is usually done using Lua patterns. Patterns are a way of extracting stuff from text using rules.

{% highlight lua %} local to, msg = string.match(param, "^([%a%d_-]+) (*+)$") {% endhighlight %}

The above implements /msg <to> <message>. Lets go through left to right:

• ^ means match the start of the string.
• () is a matching group - anything that matches stuff in here will be returned from string.match.
• [] means accept characters in this list.
• %a means accept any letter and %d means any digit.
• [%d%a_-] means accept any letter or digit or _ or -.
• + means match the last thing one or more times.
• * means match any character in this context.
• $ means match the end of the string.

Put simply, this matches the name (a word with only letters/numbers/-/_), then a space, then the message (one of more of any character). The name and message are returned, as they're surrounded in parentheses.

That's how most mods implement complex chat commands. A better guide to Lua Patterns would probably be the lua-users.org tutorial or the PIL documentation.

There is also a library written by the author of this book which can be used to make complex chat commands without Patterns called ChatCmdBuilder.

Intercepting Messages

To intercept a message, use register_on_chat_message:

{% highlight lua %} minetest.register_on_chat_message(function(name, message) print(name .. " said " .. message) return false end) {% endhighlight %}

By returning false, you allow the chat message to be sent by the default handler. You can actually remove the line return false, and it would still work the same.

WARNING: CHAT COMMANDS ARE ALSO INTERCEPTED. If you only want to catch player messages, you need to do this:

{% highlight lua %} minetest.register_on_chat_message(function(name, message) if message:sub(1, 1) == "/" then print(name .. " ran chat command") return false end

print(name .. " said " .. message)
return false

end) {% endhighlight %}