Cat Format

Simple and easy-to-use text formatting tool for Java (primarily made for Minecraft)

Why?

I got tired of using Minecraft's Text objects like huge builders (e.g Text.literal("Hello " + Formatting.RED + " world!")). And if you need to concatenate multiple Text objects, it becomes even worse. That's why I've created this library to help people write these kinds of literals easily and without any boilerplate code. Also, it doesn't support things like ClickEvent or HoverEvent, and I'm not planning on adding them in the future. But if you want, you can make a pull request!

Basic syntax

There are a few placeholders that you need to know about:

• {} - Resets the current color and style to the previous one.
• {var} - Sets the text color to the given variable color (e.g {red}, {cyan}, check Minecraft Color Codes).
• {#hex} - Sets the text color to the given hex value (e.g {#fff}, {#ff00ff}).
• +obius modifiers - Sets the modifier of the text. You can also combine modifiers, e.g {+bi} - bold + italic.
  • o - obfuscated text
  • b - bold text
  • i - italic text
  • u - underline text
  • s - strikethrough text

Installing

You can install this library using Jitpack.io

Add jitpack repository to your build.gradle:

maven { url "https://jitpack.io"  }

And then add CatFormat as a dependency:

implementation("com.github.cattyngmd.catformat:catformat-core:2.0.0")

Or if you use fabric

modImplementation("com.github.cattyngmd.catformat:catformat-fabric:2.0.0")

Example

Simple usage with Minecraft's built-in MutableText:

import dev.cattyn.catformat.fabric.FabricCatFormat;

import java.awt.Color;
import java.util.Random;

// you can create only one static instance of the Formatter and use it everywhere!
FabricCatFormat formatter = new FabricCatFormat();

void main() {
  formatter.format("{red} Hello world!"); // red colored 'Hello world!'
  formatter.format("{#f0f} Hello world!"); // magenta colored 'Hello world!'
  formatter.format("{#0000ff} Hello world!"); // blue colored 'Hello world!'
  formatter.format("{red+b} Hello {} world!"); // red colored 'Hello' with bold style and ' world!' without any style

  // It also supports Java's default formatting tool - String.format()
  formatter.format("{red} Hello %s!", "world"); // red colored 'Hello world!'

  // You can create your own color namespaces too!
  formatter.add("light_green", 0x99FF99);
  formatter.add("pink", Color.PINK.hashCode());
  formatter.add("random_color", () -> new Random().nextInt(0xFFFFFF));

  formatter.format("{light_green} Hello {random_color} world {pink}!");
}

Also, you can use classes with colors and use them in your CatFormat string:

import dev.cattyn.catformat.stylist.annotations.*;
import java.awt.*;

class Styles {
    // Mark your color with final keyword if you are not
    // going to change it, because it parses a bit faster
    @Style 
    final int black = Color.BLACK.hashCode();
  
    // You can also use `value` property in @Style
    // to set custom name to the color
    @Style("custom_name")
    final Color red = Color.RED;
    
    @Style("dynamic_color")
    int dynamic = Color.CYAN.hashCode();
    
    // And of course functions :p
    @Style("random")
    int getRandomColor() { // Beware, you cant pass any params
        return new Random().nextInt(0xFFFFFF);
    }
}

To use it in a Minecraft plugin or any other project you can make your own TextWrapper. For example

import dev.cattyn.catformat.CatWrapper;
import dev.cattyn.catformat.text.TextWrapper;

class StringWrapper implements TextWrapper<String> { // idk why but you can do that
    String colored(String text, int color) {
        return text; // NOP
    }
    
    String concat(String text, String text2) {
        return text + text2;
    }
    
    String modify(String text, Modifiers modifiers) {
        return text;
    }
    
    String newText(String text) {
        return text;
    }
}

void func() {
    CatFormat format = new CatFormat(new StringWrapper());
}