Mod Idea (better hunter actions), Mod Question

[nezumi_sennin]

Hey, I had this idea while playing just the other day... Know those health+Level bars that appear over the heads of monsters whenever you press "V" ? Would it be possible to display, on the other side of the bar, the distance to that particular target? Also, could custom action buttons be placed above and below that bar? I'm thinking this would make things very smooth for hunters and people who tend to click more than use their keyboard shortcuts.

Also, can a mod be made which will send HTTP requests to, say, a remote PHP script? Like I need a mod to increment value X in a remote database, and would like to do so by sending a request to http://remotesite.com/php/scriptname.php?myusername=x,mypassmd5=x,target=x,action=x,value=x

Would it be more feasable to have a "console mod" which sent commands to a locally-running python program which instead performed the action? The idea is to manage and modify a points system for guild members from within the game. I've never programmed a UI/Mod before, but I'd be intersted in taking it up if these ideas are actually possible.

[Walmar]

Also, can a mod be made which will send HTTP requests to, say, a remote PHP script? Like I need a mod to increment value X in a remote database, and would like to do so by sending a request to http://remotesite.com/php/scriptname.php?myusername=x,mypassmd5=x,target=x,action=x,value=x

Would it be more feasable to have a "console mod" which sent commands to a locally-running python program which instead performed the action? The idea is to manage and modify a points system for guild members from within the game. I've never programmed a UI/Mod before, but I'd be intersted in taking it up if these ideas are actually possible.

Both things are not possible AFAIK. I'm writing something similar to what you got in mind I think and determined that WoW limits contact to the other world. Network connections are not avaiable and the only way to write data to a file is via SavedVariables.lua, which is only saved once the character logs out.
I think running another program to retrieve ingame data beside WoW could violate EULA, because of 3rd party sotware.

Walmar

[nezumi_sennin]

Well, I'm not trying to retrieve and manipulate in-game data, I'm trying to retrieve and manipulate data from outside the game (for something like oh, say, DKP or some such system).

What of mods that send commands to Winamp, iTunes and Foobar from within WoW? Surely those scenarios are comparable to what I'm theorizing... that a command can be sent to a locally-running program, and that program could, in-turn, manipulate the database accordingly.