Placeholders

Note

This plugin hasn’t been approved by Modrinth yet, so you can’t download it from Modrinth right now.

A placeholder is a piece of text in your object values that HMTAPI replaces with real data when someone requests the endpoint.

Built-in placeholders

Placeholder	Where	Description
{username}	Player endpoints	The player name from the URL
{last_login}	Player endpoints	When the player last logged in
{last_seen}	Player endpoints	When the player was last seen on the server

All three need a player, so they only work on endpoints with require_player: true.

{username}

The player name exactly as it appeared in the URL. It is not corrected or reformatted, so /api/users/NoTcH answers with "username": "NoTcH".

{last_login}

The last time the player logged into the server, formatted with date_format in time_zone from your config. With the default settings it looks like 2026/09/25 22:13:20.

See Configuration for changing the format or time zone.

{last_seen}

The last time the player was seen on the server. For a player who is online this is roughly the current time.

Players who never joined

A player who has never logged in has no dates. HMTAPI replaces both {last_login} and {last_seen} with your never_seen_value — never by default:

{
  "username": "SomeNewPlayer",
  "last_login": "never",
  "last_seen": "never"
}

PlaceholderAPI placeholders

To use any PlaceholderAPI placeholder, wrap it in {papi:...}:

object:
  balance: "{papi:%vault_eco_balance%}"

Keep the % signs inside. The placeholder itself is %vault_eco_balance%, and the curly braces around it tell HMTAPI to resolve it.

You write	HMTAPI asks PlaceholderAPI for
{papi:%vault_eco_balance%}	%vault_eco_balance%
{papi:%luckperms_prefix%}	%luckperms_prefix%
{papi:%player_world%}	%player_world%

You can use several in one value:

object:
  summary: "{username} is on {papi:%player_world%} with {papi:%vault_eco_balance%} coins"

Player context

On a player endpoint (require_player: true), placeholders are resolved for the requested player, so player-specific placeholders work.

On a server-wide endpoint (require_player: false), there is no player, so placeholders are resolved without one. Server-wide placeholders such as %server_name%, %server_online% and %server_max_players% work; player placeholders such as %vault_eco_balance% will not have data.

Placeholders that cannot be resolved

If PlaceholderAPI does not know a placeholder, or the plugin that provides it is missing, HMTAPI leaves the text as it is:

{
  "balance": "%some_unknown_placeholder%"
}

This is intentional: one broken placeholder never takes down your whole endpoint. If a value comes back as raw %placeholder% text, check that the plugin providing it is installed and that it returns something for the player you queried.

Order of resolution

HMTAPI fills in its own placeholders first, then resolves {papi:...}. A value produced by PlaceholderAPI is therefore never re-processed, which means a player name that happens to contain {username} cannot cause surprises.

Common placeholders to start with

These need a player endpoint and the plugin that provides them.

Placeholder	Needs
{papi:%vault_eco_balance%}	Vault + an economy plugin
{papi:%luckperms_prefix%}	LuckPerms
{papi:%player_world%}	Nothing, provided by PlaceholderAPI expansion
{papi:%server_name%}	Nothing, works on server-wide endpoints
{papi:%server_online%}	Nothing, works on server-wide endpoints
{papi:%server_max_players%}	Nothing, works on server-wide endpoints
{papi:%player_level%}	Nothing, provided by the server

PlaceholderAPI’s own expansion placeholders are documented on the PlaceholderAPI wiki. To see everything your server offers, use the /papi parse or /papi list commands in-game.

Next steps

• Endpoints — where placeholders are used
• Troubleshooting — if a value looks wrong