Access Transformers

Access Transformers (ATs for short) allow for widening the visibility and modifying the final flags of classes, methods, and fields. They allow modders to access and modify otherwise inaccessible members in classes outside their control.

The specification document can be viewed on the NeoForged GitHub.

Adding ATs

Adding an Access Transformer to your mod project is as simple as adding a single line into your build.gradle:

Access Transformers need to be declared in build.gradle. AT files can be specified anywhere as long as they are copied to the resources output directory on compilation.

// In build.gradle:
// This block is where your mappings version is also specified
minecraft {
    accessTransformers {
        file('src/main/resources/META-INF/accesstransformer.cfg')
    }
}

By default, NeoForge will search for META-INF/accesstransformer.cfg. If the build.gradle specifies access transformers in any other location, then their location needs to be defined within neoforge.mods.toml:

# In neoforge.mods.toml:
[[accessTransformers]]
## The file is relative to the output directory of the resources, or the root path inside the jar when compiled
## The 'resources' directory represents the root output directory of the resources
file="META-INF/accesstransformer.cfg"

Additionally, multiple AT files can be specified and will be applied in order. This can be useful for larger mods with multiple packages.

// In build.gradle:
minecraft {
    accessTransformers {
        file('src/main/resources/accesstransformer_main.cfg')
        file('src/additions/resources/accesstransformer_additions.cfg')
    }
}

# In neoforge.mods.toml
[[accessTransformers]]
file="accesstransformer_main.cfg"

[[accessTransformers]]
file="accesstransformer_additions.cfg"

After adding or modifying any Access Transformer, the Gradle project must be refreshed for the transformations to take effect.

The Access Transformer Specification

Comments

All text after a # until the end of the line will be treated as a comment and will not be parsed.

Access Modifiers

Access modifiers specify to what new member visibility the given target will be transformed to. In decreasing order of visibility:

• public - visible to all classes inside and outside its package
• protected - visible only to classes inside the package and subclasses
• default - visible only to classes inside the package
• private - visible only to inside the class

A special modifier +f and -f can be appended to the aforementioned modifiers to either add or remove respectively the final modifier, which prevents subclassing, method overriding, or field modification when applied.

danger

Directives only modify the method they directly reference; any overriding methods will not be access-transformed. It is advised to ensure transformed methods do not have non-transformed overrides that restrict the visibility, which will result in the JVM throwing an error.

Examples of methods that can be safely transformed are private methods, final methods (or methods in final classes), and static methods.

Targets and Directives

Classes

To target classes:

<access modifier> <fully qualified class name>

Inner classes are denoted by combining the fully qualified name of the outer class and the name of the inner class with a $ as separator.

Fields

To target fields:

<access modifier> <fully qualified class name> <field name>

Methods

Targeting methods require a special syntax to denote the method parameters and return type:

<access modifier> <fully qualified class name> <method name>(<parameter types>)<return type>

Specifying Types

Also called "descriptors": see the Java Virtual Machine Specification, SE 21, sections 4.3.2 and 4.3.3 for more technical details.

• B - byte, a signed byte
• C - char, a Unicode character code point in UTF-16
• D - double, a double-precision floating-point value
• F - float, a single-precision floating-point value
• I - integer, a 32-bit integer
• J - long, a 64-bit integer
• S - short, a signed short
• Z - boolean, a true or false value
• [ - references one dimension of an array
  • Example: [[S refers to short[][]
• L<class name>; - references a reference type
  • Example: Ljava/lang/String; refers to java.lang.String reference type (note the use of slashes instead of periods)
• ( - references a method descriptor, parameters should be supplied here or nothing if no parameters are present
  • Example: <method>(I)Z refers to a method that requires an integer argument and returns a boolean
• V - indicates a method returns no value, can only be used at the end of a method descriptor
  • Example: <method>()V refers to a method that has no arguments and returns nothing

Examples

# Makes public the ByteArrayToKeyFunction interface in Crypt
public net.minecraft.util.Crypt$ByteArrayToKeyFunction

# Makes protected and removes the final modifier from 'random' in MinecraftServer
protected-f net.minecraft.server.MinecraftServer random

# Makes public the 'makeExecutor' method in Util,
# accepting a String and returns a TracingExecutor
public net.minecraft.Util makeExecutor(Ljava/lang/String;)Lnet/minecraft/TracingExecutor;

# Makes public the 'leastMostToIntArray' method in UUIDUtil,
# accepting two longs and returning an int[]
public net.minecraft.core.UUIDUtil leastMostToIntArray(JJ)[I