# Basic Minecraft Pi API

Sonic Pi currently supports the following basic interactions with Minecraft Pi:

- Displaying chat messages
- Setting the position of the user
- Getting the position of the user
- Setting the block type at a given coordinate
- Getting the block type at a given coordinate

Let’s look at each of these in turn.

## Displaying chat messages

Let’s see just how easy it is to control Minecraft Pi from Sonic Pi. First, make sure you have both Minecraft Pi and Sonic Pi open at the same time and also make sure you’ve entered a Minecraft world and can walk around.

In a fresh Sonic Pi buffer simply enter the following code:

    mc_message "Hello from Sonic Pi"

When you hit the Run button, you’ll see your message flash up on the Minecraft window. Congratulations, you’ve written your first Minecraft code! That was easy wasn’t it.

## Setting the position of the user

Now, let’s try a little magic. Let’s teleport ourselves somewhere! Try the following:

    mc_teleport 50, 50, 50

When you hit Run - boom! You’re instantantly transported to a new place. Most likely it was somewhere in the sky and you fell down either to dry land or into water. Now, what are those numbers: `50, 50, 50`? They’re the coordinates of the location you’re trying to teleport to. Let’s take a brief moment to explore what coordinates are and how they work because they’re really, really important for programming Minecraft.

## Coordinates

Imagine a pirate’s map with a big `X` marking the location of some treasure. The exact location of the `X` can be described with two numbers - how far along the map from left to right and how far along the map from bottom to top. For example `10cm` across and `8cm` up. These two numbers `10` and `8` are coordinates. You could easily imagine describing the locations of other stashes of treasure with other pairs of numbers. Perhaps there’s a big chest of gold at `2` across and `9` up…

Now, in Minecraft two numbers isn’t quite enough. We also need to know how high we are. We therefore need three numbers:

- How far from right to left in the world - `x`
- How far from front to back in the world - `z`
- How high up we are in the world - `y` One more thing - we typically describe these coordinates in this order `x`, `y`, `z`.

## Finding your current coordinates

Let’s have a play with coordinates. Navigate to a nice place in the Minecraft map and then switch over to Sonic Pi. Now enter the following:

    puts mc_location

When you hit the Run button you’ll see the coordinates of your current position displayed in the log window. Take a note of them, then move forward in the world and try again. Notice how the coordinates changed! Now, I recommend you spend some time repeating exactly this - move a bit in the world, take a look at the coordinates and repeat. Do this until you start to get a feel for how the coordinates change when you move. Once you’ve understood how coordinates work, programming with the Minecraft API will be a complete breeze.

## Let’s Build!

Now that you know how to find the current position and to teleport using coordinates, you have all the tools you need to start building things in Minecraft with code. Let’s say you want to make the block with coordinates `40`, `50`, `60` to be glass. That’s super easy:

    mc_set_block :glass, 40, 50, 60

Haha, it really was that easy. To see your handywork just teleport nearby and take a look:

    mc_teleport 35, 50, 60

Now turn around and you should see your glass block! Try changing it to diamond:

    mc_set_block :diamond, 40, 50, 60

If you were looking in the right direction you might have even seen it change in front of your eyes! This is the start of something exciting…

## Looking at blocks

Let’s look at one last thing before we move onto something a bit more involved. Given a set of coordinates we can ask Minecraft what the type of a specific block is. Let’s try it with the diamond block you just created:

    puts mc_get_block 40, 50, 60

Yey! It’s `:diamond`. Try changing it back to glass and asking again - does it now say `:glass`? I’m sure it does :-)

## Available block types

Before you go on a Minecraft Pi coding rampage, you might find this list of available block types useful:

        :air
        :stone
        :grass
        :dirt
        :cobblestone
        :wood_plank
        :sapling
        :bedrock
        :water_flowing
        :water
        :water_stationary
        :lava_flowing
        :lava
        :lava_stationary
        :sand
        :gravel
        :gold_ore
        :iron_ore
        :coal_ore
        :wood
        :leaves
        :glass
        :lapis
        :lapis_lazuli_block
        :sandstone
        :bed
        :cobweb
        :grass_tall
        :flower_yellow
        :flower_cyan
        :mushroom_brown
        :mushroom_red
        :gold_block
        :gold
        :iron_block
        :iron
        :stone_slab_double
        :stone_slab
        :brick
        :brick_block
        :tnt
        :bookshelf
        :moss_stone
        :obsidian
        :torch
        :fire
        :stairs_wood
        :chest
        :diamond_ore
        :diamond_block
        :diamond
        :crafting_table
        :farmland
        :furnace_inactive
        :furnace_active
        :door_wood
        :ladder
        :stairs_cobblestone
        :door_iron
        :redstone_ore
        :snow
        :ice
        :snow_block
        :cactus
        :clay
        :sugar_cane
        :fence
        :glowstone_block
        :bedrock_invisible
        :stone_brick
        :glass_pane
        :melon
        :fence_gate
        :glowing_obsidian
        :nether_reactor_core