Provided below are two suggested data specs. These specs are very open to modification and enhancement by display addons, but plugins providing data should not expect that anything except the required fields are supported in the display.

For examples on how to implement these specs, see How to provide a dataobject.

Data display addons provide a LDB “feed” for an always-up addon to display. These addons can be thought of like RSS feeds, where the display addon is similar to an RSS reader. Display addons could include FuBar, Titan Panel, StatBlocks, LegoBlocks, or any other design out there.

The different tooltip specs might seem a bit overboard, but they each have their reasons. So, to clear up a bit of the confusion…

This method is designed for displays that want control over how the tooltip is anchored and displayed. This is probably the most frequent case. In this design, the display handles everything except filling the tooltip with data. Naturally, it must pass the tooltip to be filled to the callback, some display addons might use their own tooltip instead of the global GameTooltip. This method should never be passed a frame that doesn’t support the methods GameTooltip supports, nor should the function called use methods that don’t exist for GameTooltips.

-- Don't let the mixed use of dot- (.) and colon-notation (:) confuse you here! --

-- In the data source addon...
function dataobj:OnTooltipShow()
	self:AddLine("This is a test!")
	self:AddLine("Don't mind me...")
end

-- In the display addon...
local function OnEnter(self)
	GameTooltip:SetOwner(self, "ANCHOR_NONE")
	GameTooltip:SetPoint("TOPLEFT", self, "BOTTOMLEFT")
	GameTooltip:ClearLines()
	dataobj.OnTooltipShow(GameTooltip)
	GameTooltip:Show()
end

This design is needed by plugins that wish to provide a clickable tooltip. Because the clickable tip is more complex, the plugin needs to manage when it is hidden, it can’t simply hide the tip when the base frame loses mouse focus. These functions should be attached directly to the display frame’s OnEnter and OnLeave scripts.

This option is a bit of a merge between the OnEnter/OnLeave and OnTooltipShow designs. Here the plugin provides a frame (it’s likely not a GameTooltip) for the display to anchor and show. The plugin can use the frame’s OnShow to refresh the data in the frame when it is shown. This allows the plugin to use a custom frame instead of a GameTooltip, but still allows the display control over how the frame is anchored and shown.

It’s possible that a source addon may provide more that one tooltip method. The display addon should only use one of these (even if it support all three in the spec). The generally preferred order is: tooltip > OnEnter/OnLeave > OnTooltipShow.

Generally speaking, tooltip is not likely to be implemented along with another render method. OnEnter may also provide (and use) OnTooltipShow, in this case it’s usually preferred that the display simply set the OnEnter handler directly to the frame, thus bypassing the display’s tooltip handling code and never calling OnTooltipShow from the display.

A quicklauncher is a LDB object that does not provide any data, but instead provides an OnClick handler to allow fast access to config panels, toggle settings, or perform other actions.

Quicklaunchers should never expect a secure frame to be used, therefore actions like spellcasting are not possible.

There are a number of extensions or alterations in use for data source and launchers. Here is a fluid list of those additions and variations. Authors of data provider addons or display addons that support extensions or alterations are strongly encourages to document this here so that third parties can consider these additions for their needs.

LDB is designed to be very generic. If you wish you can create your own custom spec to allow the plugin-display design within your own addons. The only requirement for these custom specs is to set the type attribute to a unique string so that other display addons will not try to render your custom dataobjects. For example, the Quicklauncher spec sets this attribute to “launcher” and the Data Display spec uses “data source”.