Places to find API documentation?

[lonelymelon07]

I've just recently started getting into Forge modding, but I've found rather a lack of documentation or proper API reference. I can follow tutorials on YouTube, sure, but I'm not the biggest fan of that other than setting me off in the right direction.

The official Forge documentation is nothing more than a brief tutorial for some basic concepts. Fine, but when I want to add a food item, for example, I find no information on the specifics of `Item$Properties#food` or its associated `FoodProperties`. My IDE (Eclipse) will tell me nothing either, and some javadocs I have found online also seem to contain no documentation whatsoever. Even trawling through source code doesn't work as all variables are named cryptically (presumably because those files are auto-generated?).

I do wonder if this is because these are part of `net.minecraft` rather that `net.minecratforge` as Eclipse does provide me with some of that information (I have just not had the need to interact with that side of the API very much).

Is there any proper documentation for `net.minecraft`? If so, where can I find it, and if not, where else can I find decent, preferably non-video tutorials or API references?

[Draco18s]

Long answer short:
No, there is no documentation.

Longer answer:
The code changes so often and so dramatically that any attempt to document it is impossible (there are a few people who've tried, the last time I saw them update was 1.7). As such your only recourse is to read the code.

[lonelymelon07]

OK, thank you, makes sense. I suppose I will be able to find some tutorials that don't make you simple copy code.

An extra question - do you know the reason some variables are named like some kind of serial number in the source? :
 

public Material(MaterialColor p_76324_, boolean p_76325_, boolean p_76326_, boolean p_76327_, boolean p_76328_, boolean p_76329_, boolean p_76330_, PushReaction p_76331_) {
      this.color = p_76324_;
      this.liquid = p_76325_;
      this.solid = p_76326_;
      this.blocksMotion = p_76327_;
      this.solidBlocking = p_76328_;
      this.flammable = p_76329_;
      this.replaceable = p_76330_;
      this.pushReaction = p_76331_;
   }

 

[Draco18s]

Because the when the game is compiled by Mojang, those names cease to exist. So when Forge decompiles it, it has to give them new ones. Those new ones are what's called SRG names, which are unique for every field, variable, method, and class, but are stable from one minor version to another (eg. 16.1 and 16.2 will decompile to the same SRG names). A second pass is then done to convert those into human readable names...which doesn't have a human readable name for everything, so the leftovers are left with SRG names, because someone has to go figure out what the human readable name should be and update the mapping.

[lonelymelon07]

OK, makes sense. Thanks very much.