List of FontStrings in a single frame

[RayuEU]

I'm working on a WoW addon that displays a variable number (between 3 and 10) of timers under eachother in a single frame. These timers of course update through OnUpdate, but when a timer is negative (e.g. -8:23) I want the text for that timer to be red. Otherwise I want it to be green. Right now the timers are fit into a single FontString seperated by "\n"s, but that doesn't allow me to do a simple FontString:SetTextColor(...) because it would give all the timers the same color.

How can I - taking into account that there is a variable number of timers - give every timer their own color? Thanks!

[stevietv]

several font strings concatenated together?

[Crudor]

You wrote it in your title: Make a list of them :-)

local MyList = {}

for i=1,10 do
 tinsert( MyList, parent:CreateFontString(...) )
end

for _, k in ipairs(MyList) do
 k:SetTextColor(...)
end

[RayuEU]

You wrote it in your title: Make a list of them :-)

local MyList = {}

for i=1,10 do
 tinsert( MyList, parent:CreateFontString(...) )
end

for _, k in ipairs(MyList) do
 k:SetTextColor(...)
end

Thanks, that really helped me out! I had an idea of how I wanted to do it but I'm new to Lua so I would've never thought of this.

[Deleted]

If you want to try a more advanced (and "prettier", from a coding point of view) implementation, Lua metatables allow for something like this:

-- this is simply an example implementation that adds "s" to the seconds value passed and forwards to :SetText - you'd usually have your timer logic, setting up OnUpdate frames and/or animations, here
local setTimer = function(timer,seconds)
    timer:SetText(("%ds"):format(seconds))
    
    if seconds > 10 then
        timer:SetTextColor(0,1,0)
    else
        timer:SetTextColor(1,0,0)
    end

    timer:Show()
end


-- create our myTimers table that will hold the timer objects
-- it is an empty table (arg1 to setmetatable) with a metatable containing an __index method (arg2 to setmetatable)
local myTimers = setmetatable({},{__index=function(t,key)
    -- create fontstring
    local timer = parent:CreateFontString()

    -- anchoring
    if key == 1 then
        timer:SetPoint("TOP",parent,"BOTTOM",0,-5) -- anchor point for first timer
    else
        timer:SetPoint("TOP",t[key-1],"BOTTOM",0,-5) -- anchor to previous timer
    end

    -- add the method
    timer.SetTimer = setTimer
    
    timer:SetTextColor(1,0,0) -- default text color
    timer:SetFont("Fonts\\FRIZQT__.TTF",13,"OUTLINE")

    t[key] = timer
    return timer
end})

This gives your myTimers table a metamethod that will automatically generate fontstrings as you access a key that doesn't exist yet. Example for accessing:

-- stuffToShow = {1, 15, 32}

-- show table entries in our fontstrings using the :SetTimer method we added to them
local nStuff = #stuffToShow
for i=1,nStuff do
    myTimers[i]:SetTimer(stuffToShow[i]) -- we don't need to worry about whether this timer exists - it's automatically created by the metamethod if it doesn't!
end

-- hide excess timers
for i=(nStuff+1),#myTimers do
    myTimers[i]:Hide()
end

Drycoded, but you get the idea.