Find BlockFace Player is Targeting

With player.getTargetBlock(), it's easy to find the block a player is looking at. It's less easy to find the BlockFace they're looking at. This is useful if you want to place a block where the player is looking, rather than replacing the block they're looking at.

I developed some code to do this for one of my plugins, and I was surprised it actually worked. This is definitely an unintuitive approach to the problem, but it's actually a lot simpler than any other solution I've found, so I thought I'd share it.

Cheers!

Code:

//code to find BlockFace player is looking at.
Block target = null;
BlockFace face = null;
//set distance to cater to your needs
Block b = p.getTargetBlock(null, 10);
//mat will placed and removed briefly to check a blockface
Material mat = Material.DIRT;
//mat needs to be different from the target block, so if the target block is dirt, mat is set to stone instead
if(b.getType().equals(Material.DIRT)){
  mat = Material.STONE;
}
BlockFace[] bfArray = {BlockFace.UP, BlockFace.NORTH, BlockFace.EAST, BlockFace.SOUTH, BlockFace.WEST, BlockFace.DOWN};
//checks each BlockFace by placing block breifly. If target block changes, block face is found
for(BlockFace bf:bfArray){
  Block block = b.getRelative(bf);
  Material type;
  Byte data;
  //check if adjacent block is not solid (prevents messing up blocks like chests)
  if(!block.getType().isSolid()){
    type = block.getType();
    data = block.getData();
    //block face check
    block.setType(mat);
    //if true, block face found
    if(p.getTargetBlock(null, 10).getType().equals(mat)){
 
      //do whatever with blockface
      target = block;
      face = bf;
 
 
    }
  //return block to original state
  block.setType(type);
  block.setData(data);
}
}

 

How about:

Code:

List<Block> blocks = p.getLastTwoTargetBlocks(null, 10);
if (blocks.size() > 1) {
  face = blocks.get(1).getFace(blocks.get(0));
}

I haven't heavily tested this yet - not sure what situations in which blocks.size might not be 2 (tested it all around a single cobblestone block sitting the air and worked fine.

 

I want to try if there is a way to resolve this problem with trigonometry or eyes angle?