Researching WoW APIs

Expert guidance for discovering and understanding World of Warcraft APIs and patterns.

Related Commands

• c-research - API research workflow

CLI Commands (Use These First)

MANDATORY: Always use CLI commands before manual exploration.

Task	Command
Search APIs (Offline)	mech call api.search -i '{"query": "*Spell*"}'
API Info	mech call api.info -i '{"api_name": "C_Spell.GetSpellInfo"}'
List by Namespace	mech call api.list -i '{"namespace": "C_Spell"}'
Search Icons	mech call atlas.search -i '{"query": "sword"}'
API Stats	mech call api.stats

Capabilities

1. API Discovery — Search 5000+ WoW APIs offline using static definitions
2. Blizzard UI Research — Find patterns in Blizzard's own Lua source code
3. Ace3 Patterns — Guidance on using common addon libraries (AceDB, AceEvent, etc.)
4. Icon/Atlas Search — Find UI assets and textures by name

Routing Logic

Request type	Load reference
Offline API lookup patterns	references/api-research.md
Blizzard UI source patterns	references/blizzard-ui.md
Ace3 library patterns	references/ace3-patterns.md
CLI Reference	../../docs/cli-reference.md

Quick Reference

Search WoW APIs

mech call api.search -i '{"query": "GetItem*", "namespace": "C_Item"}'

Get Detailed API Info

mech call api.info -i '{"api_name": "C_Spell.GetSpellInfo"}'

Search Icons

mech call atlas.search -i '{"query": "sword", "limit": 10}'

Best Practices

• Search First: Use api.search before guessing API names.
• Audit Blizzard: Use ripgrep on local wow-ui-source to see how Blizzard uses an API.
• Namespace Awareness: Most modern APIs are in C_ namespaces (e.g., C_Timer, C_Spell).