Recipes

Recipes are a way to transform some number of objects into other objects within a Minecraft world. Although the vanilla system deals purely with item transformations, the system as a whole can be expanded to use any object the programmer creates.

Data-Driven Recipes

Most recipe implementations within vanilla are data driven via JSON. This means that a mod is not necessary to create a new recipe, only a Data pack. A full list on how to create and put these recipes within the mod's resources folder can be found on the Minecraft Wiki.

A recipe can be obtained within the Recipe Book as a reward for completing an advancement. Recipe advancements always have minecraft:recipes/root as their parent, to not to appear on the advancement screen. The default criteria to gain the recipe advancement is a check if the user has unlocked the recipe from using it once or receiving it through a command like /recipe:

// Within some recipe advancement json
"has_the_recipe": { // Criteria label
  // Succeeds if examplemod:example_recipe is used
  "trigger": "minecraft:recipe_unlocked",
  "conditions": {
    "recipe": "examplemod:example_recipe"
  }
}
//...
"requirements": [
  [
    "has_the_recipe"
    // ... Other criteria labels to be ORed against to unlock recipe
  ]
]

Data-driven recipes and their unlocking advancement can be generated via RecipeProvider.

Recipe Manager

Recipes are loaded and stored via the RecipeManager. Any operations relating to getting available recipe(s) are handled by this manager. There are two important methods to know of:

Method	Description
getRecipeFor	Gets the first recipe that matches the current input.
getRecipesFor	Gets all recipes that match the current input.

Each method takes in a RecipeType, which denotes what method is being applied to use the recipe (crafting, smelting, etc.), a Container which holds the configuration of the inputs, and the current level which is passed to Recipe#matches along with the container.

tip

Forge provides the RecipeWrapper utility class which extends Container for wrapping around IItemHandlers and passing them to methods which requires a Container parameter.

// Within some method with IItemHandlerModifiable handler
recipeManger.getRecipeFor(RecipeType.CRAFTING, new RecipeWrapper(handler), level);

Additional Features

Forge provides some additional behavior to the recipe schema and its implementations for greater control of the system.

Recipe ItemStack Result

Except for minecraft:stonecutting recipes, all vanilla recipe serializers expand the result tag to take in a full ItemStack as a JsonObject instead of just the item name and amount in some cases.

// In some recipe JSON
"result": {
  // The name of the registry item to give as a result
  "item": "examplemod:example_item",
  // The number of items to return
  "count": 4,
  // The tag data of the stack, can also be a string
  "nbt": {
      // Add tag data here
  }
}

note

The nbt tag can alternatively be a string containing a stringified NBT (or SNBT) for data which cannot be properly represented as a JSON object (such as IntArrayTags).

Conditional Recipes

Recipes and their unlocking advancement can be loaded conditionally and defaulted depending on what information is present (mod loaded, item exists, etc.).

Larger Crafting Grids

By default, vanilla declares a maximum width and height for a crafting grid to be a 3x3 square. This can be expanded by calling ShapedRecipe#setCraftingSize with the new width and height in FMLCommonSetupEvent.

caution

ShapedRecipe#setCraftingSize is NOT thread-safe. As such, it should be enqueued to the synchronous work queue via FMLCommonSetupEvent#enqueueWork.

Larger crafting grids in recipes can be data generated.

Ingredient Types

A few additional ingredient types are added to allow recipes to have inputs which check tag data or combine multiple ingredients into a single input checker.