Authors CurseForge

Is there a way to intercept outgoing chat messages and replace them with something else?

For example, would it be possible to search the outgoing string for say :name: and replace it with different text before it's sent to the server?

you'd have to hook SendChatMessage() and make sure that you not interfering with addons that use chat channel comms (there are few but do exist)

Figured as much, just wanted to make sure there wasn't a simpler way to do it before I started dicking around with hooking.

Prat does it. There are some predefined replaceements in the substitutions module. And there is customfilters. You can see how that stuff works

You also have to make sure you are not replacing strings in itemlinks, achievement links, player links in particular and other links.

I think sometimes the words "simplistic" and "simple" are used interchangeably.

Hooking SendChatMessage and just changing things is a simplistic implementation. Don't expect that it will work with anything else that does the same thing, and since the chat system is such a major part of the game client, expect any defects in your code to make the game unplayable in some cases.

Look before you leap.

I just hooked ChatEdit_ParseText rather than SendChatMessage. Problem solved XD

Quote from Phanx

Well that sounds extraordinarily inefficient. ChatEdit_ParseText is run every time you type (or delete) any character while the chat edit box is focused...

It only does anything if send == 1. I don't see how a single if statement returning false whenever a key is pressed is any more inefficient than having to check possibly thousands of messages being sent by addons only to not do anything with them.

Did some more digging, and I agree with you. For some reason I was thinking that sendchatmessage and sendaddonmessage were the same functions, and thus thinking that my hooked function would then be firing on all addon communication.

Switched it over to sendchatmessage... not that it really has any noticeable effect and isn't part of a public addon, but I suppose it's the principal of the thing :P

Quote from WanderingFox

Did some more digging, and I agree with you. For some reason I was thinking that sendchatmessage and sendaddonmessage were the same functions, and thus thinking that my hooked function would then be firing on all addon communication.

Switched it over to sendchatmessage... not that it really has any noticeable effect and isn't part of a public addon, but I suppose it's the principal of the thing :P

Noone actually knows what you are doing btw. All you said is "make replacements".