Dropping an item that can't be picked up?

Is there any way that I can drop an ItemStack, but without anyone being able to pick it up?
Essentially, I need to drop the sprite of an item, but without it being able to be picked up as an item.

 

I would suggest assigning it metadata, then checking for that metadata on the pickup event and cancelling accordingly.

 

I'm pretty noob at Bukkit Plugin Development, and Java, in general. The metadata section here isn't very helpful.. Can you give me some tips?

 

Basically, all your doing is assigning a key, which is used to check your metadata, and a value, which in this case, you don't really need. I set my value to a simple boolean, since it doesnt matter.

Code:

item.setMetadata("myKey", new FixedMetadataValue(plugin, true));

Now, to check if an item has our metadata we use

Code:

boolean hasMetadata = item.hasMetadata("myKey");

The key doesnt matter, as long as its the same in both places.

Now you can cancel the ItemPickupEvent based on that boolean.

 

I tried this today, I can't setMetadata to an ItemStack.

 

Not to the ItemStack, sorry, to the item entity, I didn't specify.

 

How do I define an item then? Can I cast an ItemStack into an Item?

 

Well, you're dropping the item yourself, right?

Code:

world.dropItem(location, ItemStack);

You can just set that equal to an entity,

Code:

Entity item = world.dropItem(location, ItemStack);

 

So I can do

Code:

Entity item = world.dropItem(location, ItemStack);
item.setMetadata("key", new FixedMetadataValue(plugin, true);

 

Yup, should be good to go