listening for when player gains/losses a buff?

[BokTheGolem]

I just started writing addons and i need to look for when i gain/lose a specific buff. I looked around and found the event COMBAT_LOG_EVENT but after looking over its lengthy documentation it all seems gibberish to me. Could someone explain to me how to look for when i gain or lose a buff? An example would also be greatly appreciated.

On a side note to make floating combat text would i have to make a frame with only a fonstring as a visible element?

[Riokou]

You should probably use the event "PLAYER_AURAS_CHANGED". Have a list save each time that event fires and check it with the previous list to see what buff/debuff was added/removed.

[Davnel]

The event to check is UNIT_AURA, though you would have an easier time using COMBAT_LOG_EVENT_UNFILTERED. Though it might take longer to get used to

SPELL_AURA_APPLIED and
SPELL_AURA_REMOVED are the types of event your looking to parse from the log.

Anyway to help clear up the wiki page here goes,

First you have a base set of 8 args on ANY COMBAT_LOG_EVENT_UNFILTERED.

Now your looking at specifically at this point arg2 the event type (this is a sub event local to the combat log, NOT the COMBAT_LOG_EVENT_UNFILTERED event), specifically you want to match SPELL_AURA_APPLIED and SPELL_AURA_REMOVED. well come back to these as we need to do a little more work before we move onto the arguments these add.

Right now i'm assuming your tracking a spell on yourself. As such you want to check arg7 == your characters name.

Right now back to SPELL_AURA_APPLIED and SPELL_AURA_REMOVED. These both add an extra 4 arguments (args 9-12). Args 11 and 12 are spellschool and if its a buff/debuff so you can ignore them, 9 and 10 however allow you to check via spellid or spellname.

So quick sum up (borrowed and edited the from the wowwiki page to suit you more.)

Function Foo_OnLoad()
  this:RegisterEvent("COMBAT_LOG_EVENT_UNFILTERED");
end

Function Foo_OnEvent(self, event, ...)

  local timestamp, type, sourceGUID, sourceName, sourceFlags, destGUID, destName, destFlags = select(1, ...)
-- you can use local type = select(2, ...)
-- and local destName = select(7, ...)


if ( destName == UnitName("player") ) then
   
   if (type == "SPELL_AURA_APPLIED") then
      local spellid, spellname = select(9,...)
      -- do stuff for spell being applied here
  elseif (type == "SPELL_AURA_REMOVED") then
     local spellid, spellname = select(9,...)
     -- do stuff for spell being removed here
  end
end

end

now that should (i think work) or at least set you off on the right tracks