Dynamic Book Creation

[proven crow]

TLDR question: Can I dynamically make a written book update using commands?

Long winded explanation and random thoughts:

I am making the 3rd iteration of my spell system. I am mulling over different ways to implement the levelling system. In my previous system, I used books to unlock spells and level up the player. The issue with that is that the books were always static and I had to type like 40 of them to make the system work. For this system, I am aiming to make everything way more dynamic and formulaic. So I am wondering if making dynamic custom books is possible before I dig into making it.

The way the player gets the book is through the /trigger help menu. However, before, where I just had a bunch of premade books, I want to have 1 book and maybe I could, instead of using the give command, I summon the book as an item at the player's feet and then in the same function, I could run a BUNCH of data modify commands that basically build the book based off of the player's tags.
This way, if the player has unlocked certain things, I can disable the unlock scripts and color them differently.

The only problem I can see is tracking the inserts in the data modify... I would assume that every page is going to have at least 8 entries on it. So the data modify command cannot interfere with what was previously put in there on the page. Is that possible?

[errant dawn]

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Open question: #1264942404688019551

[humble mirage]

It's definitely possible

I'm not sure exactly the best way to go about it, depending on how the system works

[proven crow]

Give me one second

I will provide an example

This is a page from thecurrent spell system.

Basically, What I'm looking to do is go line by line and verify if the player has the unlock tag for these and change what is typed on that line.

[humble mirage]

Yeah ok

[proven crow]

the book would refresh if it's thrown out or a button is pressed.

[humble mirage]

You'll probably need to use some macros to do string concatenation

The only problem I can see with this is detecting where to break the page

[proven crow]

oh shoot macros

I have never used them...

[humble mirage]

Because depending on what's possible, it could happen that the spells overflow past the end of the page

[humble mirage]

That's ok, they're not too scary

[proven crow]

Can you direct me to a guide? 😅
The more tools I have the better the datapack will be!

[humble mirage]

Unfortunately there's no real guide to macros that I know of; the resources for datapacking are somewhat limited (we're working on it!).
You could take a look at the Minecraft wiki page on functions and macros, or if you prefer video format, there this. I haven't watched it myself, but it should be informative.

[proven crow]

Well it's a really good start, Thank you so much! I'll read up on them!