As a Dependency

In order to use WorldGuard’s API in your plugin, you need to add WorldGuard as a dependency. It may be a required or optional dependency.

API Versions

Within major versions (5.x, 6.x), WorldGuard’s API is extremely stable. Deprecation tends to occur over a period of at least 3 months, but more typically over at 6 months.

Currently, we recommend that you use some recent version of 6.x. The API had a partial overhaul in 6.x to fix some long-standing problems without breaking a significant amount of backwards compatibility.

Build Script Dependency

If you compile your plugin or mod using something like Maven or Gradle (which you should!), you will need to add WorldGuard to the list of dependencies. You can find WorldGuard’s artifacts in sk89q’s Maven repository.

• Maven repository: http://maven.sk89q.com/repo/
• Artifact: com.sk89q.worldguard:worldguard-legacy:VERSION (where VERSION is your desired version of WorldGuard)

The Maven repository should be online 24/7, and is one of Minecraft’s longest running Maven repositories.

Example: Configuring a Maven pom.xml

<repositories>
    <repository>
        <id>sk89q-repo</id>
        <url>http://maven.sk89q.com/repo/</url>
    </repository>
</repositories>

<dependencies>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>com.sk89q.worldguard</groupId>
        <artifactId>worldguard-legacy</artifactId>
        <version>VERSION</version>
    </dependency>
</dependencies>

Example: Configuring a Gradle build script

repositories {
    mavenCentral()
    maven { url "http://maven.sk89q.com/repo/" }
}

dependencies {
    compile 'com.sk89q.worldguard:worldguard-legacy:VERSION'
}

Modifying plugin.yml

First, it is important that you specify WorldGuard as a “depend” or “softdepend” in your plugin.yml file so that Bukkit knows to make sure that WorldGuard is loaded before your plugin:

name: My Plugin
version: 1.0
description: This is my plugin!
depend: [WorldGuard]

If you choose to make it a soft dependency instead, WorldGuard will load first if it’s installed, but otherwise your plugin will still load without WorldGuard.

Accessing WorldGuard From Your Plugin

There are two ways to get a reference to the WorldGuardPlugin object:

• Through Bukkit’s plugin manager
• By using the WGBukkit class

Using the Plugin Manager

import com.sk89q.worldguard.bukkit.WorldGuardPlugin;
import org.bukkit.plugin.Plugin;

private WorldGuardPlugin getWorldGuard() {
    Plugin plugin = getServer().getPluginManager().getPlugin("WorldGuard");

    // WorldGuard may not be loaded
    if (plugin == null || !(plugin instanceof WorldGuardPlugin)) {
        return null; // Maybe you want throw an exception instead
    }

    return (WorldGuardPlugin) plugin;
}

Using WGBukkit

import com.sk89q.worldguard.bukkit.WGBukkit;

WorldGuardPlugin plugin = WGBukkit.getPlugin();

Classpath Woes with Soft Dependencies

If you are using WorldGuard as hard dependency, you do not need to worry about WorldGuard clases potentially not existing at runtime. However, this is a concern if you are merely soft-depending on WorldGuard.

For example, if you tried to do:

class MyPlugin {
    public void onEnable() {
        ProtectedCuboidRegion region = new ProtectedCuboidRegion(...);
    }
}

Your plugin would not even load because ProtectedCuboidRegion could not be found. The plugin manager wouldn’t even get to be able to call onEnable(). One way around this problem is to put the offending code in a different class entirely:

class RegionHolder {
    private final ProtectedCuboidRegion region;

    public MyPlugin() {
        region = new ProtectedCuboidRegion(...);
    }
}

While you have the same problem here where you can’t even create a RegionHolder, at least you can catch the error from another class:

class MyPlugin {
    public void onEnable() {
        try {
            new RegionHolder();
        } catch (NoClassDefFoundException e) {
            // Do something here
        }
    }
}

However, this issue does not apply in all cases. Chained method calls, starting with a static method call, can be used without causing the containing class from failing to load:

class MyPlugin {
    public void onEnable() {
        try {
            boolean result = SomeClass.staticMethod();
        } catch (NoClassDefFoundException e) {
            // Do something here
        }
    }
}

It is therefore recommended that if you are using any sort of soft dependencies in your plugin, that you test your plugin without the soft dependencies installed.