Text Components/1.16

Text components (base interface ITextComponent) are forms of text used by Minecraft and Forge to concisely hold data relating to text. They form the basis of the chat system used in Minecraft. They are used for serializing and sending text data over network to players, displaying on clients, and styling for how the text appears with modifiers like bold and coloration.

There are two main types of text components: StringTextComponents and TranslationTextComponents. Both serve different purposes, although you should prefer the latter one for most general mod development. Both of these also extend from a base class of TextComponent, which has some important properties.

TextComponent

Text components at their most basic level hold a Style object and a list of "sibling" text components named siblings. In reality, these "siblings" are actually children of the main text component, and are treated as such when formatting with the Style object. A style can be applied to a text component by calling withStyle and setStyle. withStyle modifies the existing Style object with the given property, while setStyle replaces the current Style object. By default, text components use a style of Style.EMPTY, with an empty color representing white and empty properties meaning no special text formatting. To add a light blue color for example, one could simple call theTextComponent.withStyle(TextFormatting.BLUE). This will merge the BLUE color with the existing Style object. When applying a parent text component's Style to its children text components, a non-null property of a child Style will take precedence over its parent Style. This means that if the color is set for both a child and parent text component, the child's color will be displayed. Otherwise, non-null properties from a parent text component's Style override properties from the child Style if they are null.

Appending siblings

Siblings can be appended to text components similar to the plus (+) operator with Strings. Either TextComponent#append(ITextComponent) or TextComponent#append(String) can be called. The latter is an overload for the first function, and simply creates a new StringTextComponent with the provided String.

StringTextComponent

String text components are the most basic form of text components. They are raw text components that contain a single String object. These are not preferred for general mod development as they cannot be translated into other languages. All properties of the base TextComponent apply to string text components.

Creating

String text components are instantiated in the form new StringTextComponent("Hello, world!"). In practice, when sent to a player, this would simply be displayed as declared: Hello, world!.

Usage

String text components are most commonly used to create empty or space-filling text components, which can then link multiple text components together using appendSibling.

TranslationTextComponent

Translation text components are a more advanced form of text components that support String formatting and translation into multiple languages. Translation text components hold a translation key, which is integral to translation into other languages. Translation keys are then mapped with a language file (commonly know as a lang file) to their appropriate entry for each translated language. It is important to note that the translation key is translated by the client, not the server. The server sends the translation key to the player, and the player's client converts the translation key into its fully expanded form when rendering depending on the player's selected language. If a player selects a specific language for which a translation key is not mapped, it will default to English.

Format modifiers

Translation text components also support format modifiers like used in String#format. These format modifiers are declared by using the string %s when creating a translation entry for a given translation key. This format modifier will then be expanded and replaced with the provided object when rendered by the client. Any other format modifiers like %d or %n are not supported and will throw a formatting error. To get a normal percentage, a double percentage sign must be used (%%). A number can also be inserted, and it will be used as a 1-based index to select the argument. This is useful for choosing a specific argument out of order, or using the same argument twice. This looks like %1$s. The list of arguments to expand these format modifiers are passed to the constructor of the TranslationTextComponent using an Object varargs parameter, similar to String#format. The arguments passed in the constructor of a TranslationTextComponent can be either an Object or another ITextComponent. Any ITextComponents will be expanded and have any declared Styles properties preserved in the final output. Any objects that are not an instance of ITextComponent will have Object#toString called during expansion.

Creating

Translation text components are instantiated in the form new TranslationTextComponent("your.translation_key.here", new StringTextComponent("thing1").withStyle(TextFormatting.RED), new StringTextComponent("thing1").withStyle(TextFormatting.BLUE)). In your lang file, the entry would look something like:

{
    "your.translation_key.here": "I like using %1$s and %2$s!"
}

In practice, when sent to a player, this would be displayed as I like using thing1 and thing2!, where thing1 would be colored as red and thing2 would be colored as blue. Normal Strings can also be passed in, and they will inherit the Style object of the main text component. Note that any more values in the language file must be declared as comma-separated key-value pairs as required by the JSON specification, with the last key-value pair not ending with a comment.

Usage

Translation text components are used for sending anything visual to the player. Using them provides a benefit of format modifiers and the ability to be translated into different languages. This means that, given a translator, one could translate the English translation file (by default, en_us.json) into another language for a given mod. This system is also used by Minecraft itself and has been used to translate the game into hundreds of langauges. Translation keys are also required for declaring the names of items, blocks, and entities in the game.