This is a discussion topic for the Ore project, WebBooks. View the full project on Ore for downloads and more information.
WebBooks
Open websites in Minecraft
Clarification
This Plugin is no general purpose web-browser (yet). It was developed for server teams that consists of mostly web devs, allowing them do display information processed outside of the game server to players ingame.
The biggest hurdle is pagination, since Minecraft does not automatically turn the page in books once one is full. There was also no way of space occupied by text in the API.
Another reason is the choice of sending Player information to the server as POST by default. While this allows for simple processing of said information, most WebServer see POST as âcreate somethingâ and thus will fail the request.
While player information can also be sent through headers as regular GET requests, there is still the fact that forms (like logins) cannot be easily filled with Minecraft.
Commands
The main command is /webbook or /wbk for short. Or /url if you fancy that.
The syntax is as follows: /<command> [-s [-a <author>] | -c] <url> [target].
-
urlis the website to load and display -
targetis a optional parameter specifying whoâs supposed to see the website.
This parameter requires the permissionwebbooks.url.other -
-cwill open the website paginated into the chat instead of as a book.
following links will open a book reguardless -
-sthis can not be used with-cas it supressed any output. Instead the website will be stored away in a physical book.
Links that execute server-commands will not work well with those!
This option requires the permissionwebbooks.url.save -
-a <author>only affects-s. Will set the author of the book item. Supports color codes.
This option requires the permissionwebbooks.url.author
The base permission to use the command is webbooks.url.base
In order to browse domains, the permission webbooks.broswe.<domain> is required as well. The permission requires the domain backwards to allow the permission system to automatically manage subdomains. For example: example.com would require the permission webbooks.browse.com.example. That permission would also allow minecraft.example.com. And due to how the permission system works webbooks.browse handles all domains.
Config
The config file provides options to Proxy the requests. This is usefull as every website will be loaded by the game-server. So going to any website will expose the ip to it. Not like you can just lookup the ip by the server-name, but itâs there as a feature.
Keep in mind tho that any response from the web-server must happen within 3 seconds before timing out!
With the MOTD you can specify a url to display when a player joins your server. This might be usefull to have a dynamic greeting message, automatically updated rules or what ever you come up with to write on your webserver.
The ExtendedTooltips option is on by default. It add an extra line to ever link, showing the command that will be run or the URL that will be opened. Tooltips can also be hidden per link (see the following section).
Specifying a DefaultAuthor is only required if you donât like the default author (âSaved Websiteâ) when -s is used to save the website to an item.
The PageSelector is probably the most important part in your project, as it determines how pages are split up. Minecraft has no way of doing automatic page breaks unfortunately, and this solution seems fine. The default selector is ul.book li.
Various player information is sent to the server, depending on the specified TransportMethod.
Valid values are described below.
Web-Part:
Pages are by default selected with the css-selector ul.book li. This can be changed in the config tho, if you donât like it.
Player data are sent according to the transport method. If youâre writing a service and you want to be able to service all types, you can distinguish them by request method and Content-Type header.
Example PHP showcasing how to server post/formdata request with the default ul.book li selector:
<?PHP
//Preparing data for display, split them on the delimiter '/'
$worldData = explode('/', $_POST['World']);
$worldName = $worldData[0];
$statusData = explode('/', $_POST['Status']);
$health = $statusData[0];
$level = $statusData[2];
$playerName = $_POST['Name'];
?>
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Test Book</title>
</head>
<body>
<ul class="book">
<li><u>This is <span class="mc-m">website</span> book!</u>
<br>
<br>Your User-Agent: <?= $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'] ?>
<br>
<br><i>1</i> <a href="#2">2</a> <a href="#3">3</a>
<li>Hello, <?= $playerName ?> level <?= $level ?>
<br>
<br>You are currently in <?= $worldName ?> with <?= $health ?> HP
<br>
<br><a href="#1">1</a> <i>2</i> <a href="#3">3</a>
<li>Test some links:
<br>
<br><a href="kill" target="_player">Die now</a>
<br><a href="test.php">Reload site</a>
<br><a href="stop" target="_server" data-permission="webbooks.links.admin" title="Please dont :<">Kill the server</a>
<br><a href="http://www.google.com" target="_blank">Go to google</a>
<br>
<br><a href="#1">1</a> <a href="#2">2</a> <i>3</i>
</ul>
</body>
</html>
Formatting your website
To reflect the limited set for formats available to minecraft a fix set of style classes has to be used.
Those can in return be defined in your stylesheet as well to support displaying the content in an actual web-browser.
The class names have a mc--Prefix followed by the format-code. Some bold red text could be:
<span class="mc-c mc-l">Text</span> or
<b><span class="mc-c">Text</span></b> or
<b class="mc-c">Text</b>
Adding hover text
You can attach a line of text to be displayed on hovering to pretty much any element using the title attribute for the html node in case a element needs further explanation.
Links and special targets
Links will work as expected, loading the website and viewing it as another book.
As you might expect if you add target="_blank" to your link Minecraft will ask the player to open the link in the system web-browser.
But it would be pretty boring if that was everything a book could do, so thereâs a little bit more you can do with links:
-
<a href="#1">will not jump to sections with the specified id, but instead jump to the given pagenumber -
<a href="command" target="_player">will execute the command in href as if the player typed it. the/is optional. -
<a href="command" target="_server">will execute the command in href as the server with op-powers. These links will break if you save the website, but not cause any big errors (Besides telling the player that the callback stopped working)
Links with target â_playerâ and â_serverâ allow for a additional attribute data-permission to restrict usage.
Using this parameter on â_playerâ commands will break the link in saved book in the same way â_severâ commands will break in saved books.
An example would be <a href="stop" target="_server" data-permission="server.admin.stop">Stop the server</a>
The target along with the url will be shown in a hover text for each link like:
-
URL: urlfor normal links -
Extern: urlfor links with target_blank -
Run: commandfor links with target_player -
¶ Run: commandfor links with target_playerand a required permission -
Server: commandfor links with target_server -
¶ Server: commandfor links with target_serverand a required permission
If you donât want this target text you can disable ExtendedTooltips in the config or add the attribute data-title-hide-href.
Available player-data:
For post/json the request method will be POST and player data will be a json like this:
{
"subject": {
"name": String, "uuid": UUID,
"health": Number, "foodLevel": Number,
"expLevel": Number, "gameMode": String
},
"location": {
"world": { "name": String, "uuid": UUID },
"position": { "x": Number, "y": Number, "z": Number }
},
"connection": {
"ip": String, "port": Number, "latency": Number,
"joined": { "first": IsoDate, "last": IsoDate }
}
}
For post/formdata the request method will be POST and the data will be url-form endcoded. (New Lines are only for readability)
Name=<NAME>&
UUID=<UUID>&
World=<NAME>/<UUID>&
Location=<X>/<Y>/<Z>&
Connection=<IP>:<PORT>/<LATENCY>ms&
Joined=<FIRST>/<LAST>&
Status=<HEALTH>/<FOODLEVEL>/<EXPLEVEL>/<GAMEMODE>
For get/header the request method will be GET and the data will be sent in headers:
X-WebBook-User=<NAME>; <UUID>
X-WebBook-World=<NAME>; <UUID>
X-WebBook-Location=<X>; <Y>; <Z>
X-WebBook-Connection=<IP>:<PORT>; <LATENCY>ms
X-WebBook-Joined=<FIRST>; <LAST>
X-WebBook-Status=<HEALTH>; <FOODLEVEL>; <EXPLEVEL>; <GAMEMODE>
User-Agent string:
Before 1.2:
<MinecraftName>(<ExecutionType>/<Type>) <MinecraftVersion>/<SpongeName> <SpongeVersion>/WebBooks(webbook) <WebBooksVersion>
Since 1.2:
<MinecraftName>/<MinecraftVersion> <SpongeName>/<SpongeVersion>(<SpongePlatform>; <SpongeType>) WebBooks/<WebBooksVersion> (webbook; by DosMike)
This Plugin utilizes JSoup
Jsoup is licensed under MIT-License
Poject Homepage â License-Text
