Bukkit

This marks the release of the next major version ProtocolLib, containing a fix for a potential bug and support for NBT tags.

Although this particular update is not breaking nor significant enough to warrant it, I've nevertheless decided to increment the major version. It's long overdue - I should have made this jump before releasing 1.8.0 to emphasize the breaking change in the API (getHandle() now returns Object), but it's too late to change it now.

The main new feature of this update is the ability to modify NBT tags in packets and item stacks, along with reading and writing them to different output formats. For instance, you can now store auxiliary data in an ItemStack very simply:

ItemStack counter = target.getItemInHand();
NbtCompound tag = NbtFactory.asCompound(NbtFactory.fromItemTag(counter));
NbtCompound data = tag.getCompoundOrDefault("com.comphenix.example");
 
// Increment the count
data.put("count", data.getIntegerOrDefault("count") + 1);
sender.sendMessage("Current count: " + data.getInteger("count"));

I've also added an utility class that can serialize and deserialize ItemStacks from byte arrays and strings.

Of course, you can also access and modify the NBT data in packet 132 (Update Tile Entity):

manager.addPacketListener(new PacketAdapter(
  this, ConnectionSide.SERVER_SIDE, Packets.Server.TILE_ENTITY_DATA) {
    @Override
    public void onPacketSending(PacketEvent event) {
        NbtBase<?> nbt = event.getPacket().getNbtModifier().read(0);
        
        System.out.println("Sent " + nbt.toString());
    }
});

New features

• Add support for reading and writing NBT tags in packets.
• Add the ability to serialize ItemStacks to strings.
• Add a serializer for reading and writing ItemStacks to byte arrays.
• Added the ability to serialize and deserialize NBT to many formats.

Updates

• Switched to a better base64 encoding and decoding method.
• Updated Metrics to version 6.

Bug fixes

• Don't load classes on secondary threads. ADDRESSES TICKET-27.