PlaceholderAPI
Publishing our placeholders, and resolving other plugins' inside our text.
Placeholders work in both directions: uxmEssentials publishes its own data for other plugins to display, and resolves PlaceholderAPI tokens inside its own menus, holograms, scoreboards and messages.
What They Are
- PlaceholderAPI (PAPI) is the standard bridge that lets plugins share dynamic
values as
%tokens%. - MiniPlaceholders does the same for MiniMessage-native
<tags>, with a focus on server-global values.
Both are optional soft-depends.
Placeholders uxmEssentials Provides
When PlaceholderAPI is installed, uxmEssentials registers a %uxmessentials_<key>%
expansion carrying 170 keys across 22 areas: economy, homes, warps, player warps,
worlds, teleport, kits, vaults, vote, presence, player state, messaging, communication,
moderation, staff, Discord linking, ranks, poses, holograms, menus, the scoreboard and
the server metrics.
%uxmessentials_economy_balance%
%uxmessentials_homes_count%
%uxmessentials_presence_afk%
%uxmessentials_server_tps%
Every key, with what it renders and whether it answers for an offline player, is on the Placeholder Reference. That page is generated from the catalogue inside the plugin, and a build-time guard resolves the catalogue against the resolver in both directions, so it cannot name a key this build does not answer.
The Two-Player Form
A handful of keys read the relation between two players rather than one player's own
state: whether the viewer can see the other, ignores them, is trading with them, and how
far apart they stand. These carry PlaceholderAPI's rel_ prefix and only answer on a
surface that renders per viewer, such as a chat format, a tab line or a nametag.
%rel_uxmessentials_cansee%
%rel_uxmessentials_ignoring%
%rel_uxmessentials_distance%
%rel_uxmessentials_trading%
Anywhere else, PlaceholderAPI has only one player to work with and leaves the raw token in place, which is how you tell "no relation" from "wrong surface".
/uxmess placeholders lists the areas in game and /uxmess placeholders <area> reads
one; /uxmess placeholders export writes the whole catalogue to placeholders.md in
the plugin folder. Test any single key with /papi parse me %uxmessentials_...%.
Using PAPI Inside uxmEssentials
The reverse direction is just as useful: uxmEssentials resolves any installed PlaceholderAPI expansion inside its own operator-authored text. That means a menu, hologram or scoreboard can show data from other plugins.
- In menus: reference a PAPI value with the built-in
%papi_<name>%token, or gate an item with thepapi-compare:requirement. - In holograms & the HUD: drop
%luckperms_prefix%,%server_ram_used%or any other expansion straight into a hologram line, scoreboard row or tablist entry. - In the chat format: the communication module's
chat.confformat expands%...%placeholders per speaker, so a rank prefix or balance can sit in the line.
# a scoreboard line mixing uxmEssentials and a third-party expansion
Balance: %uxmessentials_economy_balance%
Rank: %luckperms_prefix%
MiniPlaceholders
If MiniPlaceholders is installed, uxmEssentials folds its server-global
TagResolver into its own MiniMessage rendering. Operator content can then use
MiniPlaceholders global tags directly:
<server_online> players online right now
uxmEssentials does not register its own MiniPlaceholders expansion; it only consumes the global tags MiniPlaceholders publishes.
When They're Absent
| Missing plugin | Behavior |
|---|---|
| PlaceholderAPI | The %uxmessentials_% expansion is never registered; unknown %tokens% are left as raw text. HUD keeps working thanks to its built-in {server_*} tokens, which need no PAPI. |
| A disabled module | Its placeholders degrade to "-" rather than erroring. |
| MiniPlaceholders | The global resolver is empty; MiniMessage parses exactly as it would without it. |
Setup Checklist
- Install PlaceholderAPI: the
%uxmessentials_%expansion registers itself on startup, no config required. - (Optional) Install MiniPlaceholders for
<global_tags>in your own content. - Use
%uxmessentials_...%in any PAPI-aware plugin, and%papi_<name>%/%other_plugin_...%inside uxmEssentials menus, holograms and the HUD.
Related: Scoreboard, Tablist & Nametags, Menu Actions & Requirements, Holograms, Placeholder Reference
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