Command Help

Command Help System

CURRENTLY UNSTABLE API

The Command System currently works with no bugs, but it is considered an Unstable API as the API may need to change, and Unstable API's are allowed to break without bumping the version number,

We do not anticipate any large changes to this system that would break your code in significant ways though, so the risk is extremely low.

In order to use the Help API, you must call in your manager before registering any commands:

manager.enableUnstableAPI("help")

Purpose

This system allows ACF to generate help documents to the command issuer. If fed input, it will search all of the command metadata and filter the command list to potential desired commands. All command input, such as names, subcommands, syntax and descriptions feed the search system.

So you are able to allow users to find their potentially desired command very quickly, and you do not need to build your own help documents.

Documenting commands

Simply ensure every command has a @Description annotation. If the default automatically generated syntax string is not good enough, also define @Syntax.

If you wish to provide even more keywords for the search engine to Feed against, you mays also add @HelpSearchTags("tag1 tag2 tag3") etc to help the command be discovered.

Triggering Help - Context / HelpCommand

The simplest way to show help information is by using the @HelpCommand annotation like so:

    @HelpCommand
    public void doHelp(CommandSender sender, CommandHelp help) {
        sendMsg(sender, heading("Anti Grief Help"));
        help.showHelp();
    }

@HelpCommand is a shortcut for @Default if not set on something else already, @UnknownHandler if not set already on something, and @Subcommand("help") If you are using @Default or @UnknownHandler for other purposes, ensure your method with @HelpCommand is BELOW those methods to ensure the other methods are used instead.

CommandHelp is registered as a command context, and will consume the input of the command to feed the search system, so you should never use CommandHelp on a real command as a context.

Triggering manually

You may throw the ShowCommandHelp exception, optionally pass a boolean to trigger the search mode, and optionally pass your own set of search arguments too.

Otherwise, call manager.generateCommandHelp and use accordingly.