There is an API provided function, let's call it createBase which returns a table (object). I want to add methods to this table, but I can't just do x = createBase() and then function x:foo() because I have another function similar to createBase, but it's createExtended. It might be easier to explain with the code I have so far:
import api --I don't know how you'd do this in vanilla Lua, I'd use os.loadAPI("api") but that's computercraft specific, I think
Extended = {}
function Extended:foo()
print("foo from extended")
end
function createExtended(params)
x = api.createBase(params)
Extended.__index = x
return Extended --this is obviously wrong: you can't return a class and expect it to be an object
end
Of course, this doesn't work: but I don't know how I might make it work either. Let's assume the table returned by createBase has a function called bar which just prints bar from base. With this test code, the following outputs are given:
e = createExtended()
e.foo() --prints "foo from extended"
e.bar() --nil, therefor error
How can I make this possible, short of defining function x.bar() inside createExtended?
Thanks in advance.
The very simplest way is to attach the method to it directly, instead of using a metatable.
local function extend(super_instance)
super_instance.newMethod = newMethod
return super_instance
end
local function createExtended(...)
return extend(createSuper(...))
end
This will work, unless your superclass uses __newindex (for example, preventing you from writing to unknown properties/methods), or iterates over the keys using pairs or next, since it will now have an additional key.
If for some reason you cannot modify the object, you will instead have to 'wrap' it up.
You could make a new instance which "proxies" all of its methods, properties, and operators to another instance, except that it adds additional fields and methods.
local function extend(super_instance)
local extended_instance = {newMethod = newMethod}
-- and also `__add`, `__mul`, etc as needed
return setmetatable(extended_instance, {__index = super_instance, __newindex = super_instance})
end
local function createExtended(...)
return extend(createSuper(...))
end
This will work for simple classes, but won't work for all uses:
Table iteration like pairs and next won't find the keys from the original table, since they're not actually there. If the superclass inspects the metatable of the object it is given (or if the superclass is actually a userdata), it will also not work, since you'll find the extension metatable instead.
However, many pure-Lua classes will not do those things, so this is still a fairly simple approach that will probably work for you.
You could also do something similar to Go; instead of having a way to 'extend' a class, you simply embed that class as a field and offer convenience to directly calling methods on the wrapping class that just call the methods on the 'extended' class.
This is slightly complicated by how 'methods' work in Lua. You can't tell if a property is a function-that-is-a-property or if it's actually a method. The code below assumes that all of the properties with type(v) == "function" are actually methods, which will usually be true, but may not actually be for your specific case.
In the worst case, you could just manually maintain the list of methods/properties you want to 'proxy', but depending on how many classes you need to proxy and how many properties they have, that could become unwieldy.
local function extend(super_instance)
return setmetatable({
newMethod = newMethod, -- also could be provided via a more complicated __index
}, {
__index = function(self, k)
-- Proxy everything but `newMethod` to `super_instance`.
local super_field = super_instance[k]
if type(super_field) == "function" then
-- Assume the access is for getting a method, since it's a function.
return function(self2, ...)
assert(self == self2) -- assume it's being called like a method
return super_field(super_instance, ...)
end
end
return super_field
end,
-- similar __newindex and __add, etc. if necessary
})
end
local function createExtended(...)
return extend(createSuper(...))
end
Related
I'm new to Lua and trying to understand the concept of OOP in Lua. To do so, I've tried creating an object and creating methods and "private variables". My issue is when I try to use "setters" or "getters", it's indicating that my tables are returning NIL which means I'm either having a scoping issue or something else I can't figure out.
The kicker is I'm using an example from an online Lua coding tutorial, and when I run the tutorial it works flawlessly. However, when I run mine, I get NIL or nothing outputs whenever I try to "get" or return a value from one of the member functions.
I'm using a couple of different environments:
ZeroBrain
Sublime Text
Lua for Windows
Do you know why my code is not returning populated tables?
newPlayer = function(n, h, a, r)
player = {}
n = n or ""
h = h or 100
a = a or 100
r = r or 0
function player:getPlayerName()
return n
end
function player:getPlayerHealth()
return h
end
function player:getPlayerArmor()
return a
end
function player:getPlayerRank()
return r
end
function player:setPlayerName(arg)
n = arg
end
function player:setPlayerHealth(arg)
h = arg
end
function player:setPlayerArmor(arg)
a = arg
end
function player:setPlayerRank(arg)
r = arg
end
function player:connect(arg)
print(string.format(" %s joined" , arg))
end
return player
end
player1 = newPlayer("John", 100, 100, 1000)
player1.getPlayerName()
Your code does not contain "populated tables" to return.
Your newPlayer function does create a table, and it does return it. It creates a number of functions within that table. But that's all newPlayer does: creates a table and puts some functions in it.
The data accessed by those functions is not part of the table. n, h, a, and r (BTW, please use better variable names) are all local variables. Your inner functions will access the specific stack containing those variables, but the variables themselves will not be magically associated with the table.
Your principle problem is almost certainly with the setters. And it comes from a combination of this:
function player:setPlayerName(arg)
with this:
player1.getPlayerName()
When you create a function using a : character between a table name and the function's name, you are using syntactic sugar for a function which implicitly takes as its first argument a value called self. As the name suggests, this is supposed to represent the object which this function is being called upon. So your function creation code is equivalent to:
function player.setPlayerName(self, arg)
Since you create all of your functions with :, all of your functions take at least one parameter.
The : syntax can also be used when calling such functions. If you did player1:getPlayerName(), this would cause the table you accessed to find the getPlayerName function to be used as the first argument in the function call. So that line would be equivalent to player1.getPlayerName(player1).
Obviously, these two syntaxes are mirrors of one another: functions created with : take a parameter that is expected to refer to the table it is being called on, and functions called with : will be given the table which was accessed to get that function.
But... your code didn't stick to the symmetry. You created the functions with :, but you call them with .
Now, you get functions are able to get away with this because... well, none of your values are actually part of the table. So your get functions just return the local value that they adopted from their creating context.
The set functions pose a problem. See, they take a parameter. But because the function was declared with :, they really take two parameters, the first being the implicit self.
Now, : syntax is just syntactic sugar; it's just a convenient way to do what you could have done yourself. So it is in theory OK to call a function with . even if you created it with :. But if you do so, you must pass the table as the first parameter. Though your code doesn't show it, I strongly suspect you didn't do that.
If you called player1.setPlayerName("foo"), what will happen is that the implicit self parameter will get the value "foo", and the arg parameter will be nil. And you will assign that nil value to the n local variable. So subsequent calls to player1.getPlayerName() will return nil.
Basically, what's going on here is that you're combining two different ways of creating objects in Lua. You stored your private data in a way that external code cannot access (ie: local upvalues), but that data is now no longer part of the table itself. Which means that, although you dutifully create those functions with : syntax to indicate that they take a self table, they never actually use that table. And because they never use the table, it's a lot harder to figure out what's going wrong.
Basically, the key here is to be symmetrical. If you create a function with :, then you should either call it with : or make sure to pass it the object table as the first parameter.
Broadly speaking, the standard way to create private members is by convention, not by forbidding it. That is, you agree not to mess with any members of a table other than those with certain names. Python convention is to pretend that names starting with _ don't exist, and Lua programs sometimes use that.
Upvalues are an interesting solution for private variables, but they do come with problems. If you want to invent a member variable, you have to do it in a centralized place rather than wherever you might need one. Even if the variable is optional, you have to create a named local at the top of the function.
TLDR of Nicol's answer, see my answer to another question:
function player:setPlayerArmor(arg)
a = arg
end
The : syntax is syntactic sugar. It creates an implicit 'self' argument when declared, and when used. If you declare it one way and use it another, the arguments won't be what you're expecting. Say your player has 100 health. Look at this result:
player1.setPlayerHealth(55, 66)
print(player1.getPlayerHealth())
-- will display '66', not '55' because `:` declares implicit 'self' argument
This displays 66 because the setPlayerHealth function has an implicit 'self' parameter because it was declared with :. If you instead called it
with the ::
player1:setPlayerHealth(55, 66)
print(player1:getPlayerHealth())
-- will display '55' because `:` passes player1 as self
function player:setHealth1(arg)
-- implicit 'self' argument refers to player1 when called on player1
end
-- is the same as
function player.setHealth2(self, arg)
-- with `.` notation, you need to add the 'self' argument explicitly
end
player1.setHealth1(31) -- self argument will be 31 and arg will be nil
player1.setHealth2(32) -- self argument will be 32 and arg will be nil
player1:setHealth1(33) -- self argument will be player1 and arg will be 33
player1:setHealth2(34) -- self argument will be player1 and arg will be 34
Now I have an import(a) function, that in short words dofile's header in .framework like this:
import("<Kakao/KARect>") => dofile("/System/Library/Frameworks/Kakao.framework/Headers/KARect.lua")
And in KARect.lua for example I have:
KARect = {}
function KARect:new(_x, _y, _width, _height, _colorBack)
local new = setmetatable({}, {__index = self})
new.id = KAEntities:generateID()
...
return new
end
function KARect:draw()
...
end
After some time I thought about reworking this system and making "headers" work like typical Lua modules with advanced require() so function will do e.g.:
import("<Kakao/KARect>") => package.path = "/System/Library/Frameworks/Kakao.framework/Headers/?.lua"; KARect = require("KARect")
and file will contain:
local KARect = {}
...
return KARect
Because headers should not contain anything but only classes with their names? I'm getting confused when thinking about it, as I never used Obj C :s
I never used Obj C
Then why are you trying to implement its headers in a language, that does not use headers at all?
Header! What is a header?
Header files in C-like languages store more than just a name. They store constants and macro commands, function and class method argument and return types, structure and class fields. In essence, the contents of the header file are forward declarations. They came into existence due to the need to perform the same forward-declarations across many files.
I don't know what additional rules and functions were added to header files in Obj-C, but you can get general understanding of what they do in the following links: 1, 2, 3, 4 with the last one being the most spot-on.
Answer to the question present
Lua is dynamically-typed interpreted language. It does not do compile time type checks and, typically, Lua programs can and should be structured in a way that does not need forward declarations across files. So there is no meaningful way for a programmer to create and for lua bytecode generator and interpreter to use header files.
Lua does not have classes at all. The code you've posted is a syntactic sugar for an assignment of a function with a slightly different signature to a table which imitates class:
KARect.new = function( first_arg_is_self, _x, _y, _width, _height, _colorBack)
local new = setmetatable({}, {__index = first_arg_is_self})
return new
end
There is no declarations here, only generation of an anonymous function and its assignment to a field in a table. Other parts of program do not need to know anything about a particular field, variable or function (which is stored in variable) in advance (unlike C).
So, no declaration means nothing to separate from implementation. You of course can first list fields of the class-table and do dummy assignments to them, but, again, Lua will have no use for those. If you want to give hints to humans, it is probably better to write a dedicated manual or put comments in the implementation.
Lua has situations where forward declarations are needed to reference local functions. But this situation does not arise in object oriented code, as all methods are accessed through reference to the object, and by the time first object is created, the class itself is usually fully constructed.
In a MATLAB class I am writing, if the constructor is given 0 arguments, the user is asked to provide a file using uigetfile. If the user cancels the prompt, uigetfile returns 0. In that case it makes no sense to make the object. Is there some way of cancelling the object construction without throwing an exception? If I do an early return I get a malformed object that cannot be used. Here is what the code looks like:
classdef MyClass
methods
function self = MyClass(filename)
if nargin == 0
filename = uigetfile;
if filename == 0
%cancel construction here
return; %I still get a MyClass object with self.filename == []
end
end
self.filename = filename;
end
end
properties
filename;
end
end
However I am unsure if using uigetfile in the constructor is the right thing to do. Maybe it should be the resposibility of another part of my code.
In modern Matlab objects, I don't think it's possible to get out of the constructor without either returning a constructed object or throwing an error. (In the old style classes, the constructor was actually allowed to return whatever it wanted, including objects or primitives of other types, and oh man could that turn in to a mess.) When a constructor is called, the output argument is already intialized with an object with the default property values, so when you call return there, it just skips the rest of initialization and returns the object. If you try to replace out with something besides a MyClass object, that's an error.
Just reorganize the control flow to pull the GUI code out of the constructor, like you're speculating on at the end. Mixing it in to the constructor, especially conditionally, can cause problems. In particular, Matlab expects the zero-arg constructor to always return a scalar object with some sort of default values, because the zero-arg gets called implicitly when filling in elements during array expansion and so on. It's basically used as a prototype.
Lets say I have some "object" that I've defined elsewhere. Maybe it represents a set of items, but is more complex than a simple table. Whatever it may be, it would be logical to iterate over it.
As such, it has a iterator method defined. So I can write this:
local myObject = AbstractObject:new()
for obj in myObject:iterator() do
obj:foo()
end
What I'm wondering is if there is some metamethod trickery that I can do, which will allow me to write this:
local myObject = AbstractObject:new()
for obj in myObject do
obj:foo()
end
So is there?
One slight change to your example would make the semantics a lot less painful:
local myObject = AbstractObject:new()
for obj in myObject() do
obj:foo()
end
That way, you can use a metatable to define the __call metamethod to return myObject:interator(), with code that looks something like this in AbstractObject:new():
setmetatable(newobject, {__call = function() return newobject:iterator() end})
Without the iterator construction, you'll be effectively reusing a single iterator for multiple iterations, which means you'll need to keep the iterator state in the object/creation closure, and reset it after it finishes so the next call will restart the iteration again. If you really want to do this, the best solution would really be to write something for the specific iteration implementation, but this would perform the generic iteration:
local iterator
--table.pack is planned for 5.2
local pack = table.pack or function(...)
local t = {...}
t.n = select('#',...)
return t
end
--in 5.1 unpack isn't in table
local unpack = table.unpack or unpack
function metamethods.__call(...)
if not iterator then
iterator = newobject:iterator()
end
local returns = pack(iterator(...))
if returns[1] == nil then
--iteration is finished: next call will restart iteration
iterator = nil
end
return unpack(returns, 1, returns.n)
end
Again: This should really be adjusted to fit your use case.
The object used after in must be a function, which will be called repeatedly by the generic for loop.
I'm not sure if you can make a table or user object callable like a function, but even then the problem would be that your object can only have one internal iterator state - i.e. it would not allow multiple iterations over the same object (neither concurrently nor sequentially), unless you are somehow explicitly resetting it.
As answered by Stuart, you could use the __call metamethod suitably to return the iterator, but then you would have to write
for obj in myObject() do
obj:foo()
end
This is not quite what we want.
Reading a bit more in PiL, I see that there are more components used in the for loop: the invariant loop state, and the current value of the control variable, which are passed to the iterator function in each call. If we don't provide them in the in expression, they are initialized to nil.
Thus, my idea would be to use these values to distinguish the individual calls.
If you can create a next(element) function for your collection which returns for each element the next one, the implementation would be simple:
metatable.__call = function(_state, _last)
if(_last == nil) then
return obj:first()
else
return obj:next(_last)
end
end
But often we would not have something like this, then it gets more complicated.
I thought about using coroutines here, but these still need a factory method (which we want to avoid).
It would result in something similar like what Stuart wrote (i.e. saving the iterator state somewhere in the object itself or in some other variable related to the object), and using the parameter and/or the iterators result to decide when to create/clean the iterator object/state.
Nothing won here.
Some code to illustrate my question:
With Test.AnObject
.Something = 1337
.AnotherThing = "Hello"
''// why can't I do this to pass the object itself:
Test2.Subroutine(.)
''// ... and is there an equivalent, other than repeating the object in With?
End With
There is no way to refer to the object referenced in the With statement, other than repeating the name of the object itself.
EDIT
If you really want to, you could modify your an object to return a reference to itself
Public Function Self() as TypeOfAnObject
Return Me
End Get
Then you could use the following code
With Test.AnObject
Test2.Subroutine(.Self())
End With
Finally, if you cannot modify the code for an object, you could (but not necessarily should) accomplish the same thing via an extension method. One generic solution is:
' Define in a Module
<Extension()>
Public Function Self(Of T)(target As T) As T
Return target
End Function
called like so:
Test2.Subroutine(.Self())
or
With 1
a = .Self() + 2 ' a now equals 3
End With
I suspect you'll have to repeat yourself. If the expression (to get the object) is expensive, then perhaps drop it into a variable first, and either use that variable in the With, or drop the With completely:
tmp = Test.AnObject;
tmp.Something = 1337;
...
Test2.Subroutine(tmp);
As others have said, you're going to have to write
Test2.Subroutine(Test.AnObject)
This is a good example of why it's worth being a little careful with the With construct in VB.Net. My view is that to make it worth using at all, you really need to be setting more than one or two properties, and/or calling more than one or two methods on the object in the With statement.
When there are lots, and you're not interspersing the .SomeProperty = , or .DoSomething, with other things, it's a terrific aid to readability.
Conversely, a few dots sprinkled amongst a load of other stuff is actually a lot harder to read than not using With at all.
In this case, . characters on their own could easily get lost visually, although of course, it would be syntactically consistent.
I guess they just chose not to implement it. VB isn't really the sort of language where they want to encourage single character language elements, and as a heavy user of VB.Net, I broadly agree with that.
Bottom line: if you're using a With clause with many contained elements, having to refer to the object itself isn't that big a deal. If you're using it with just one or two, maybe better not to use a With clause in the first place.
I'm not sure this is an "answer", per se, but it does illustrate another reason to want a short-hand reference to the parent in a With.
Here's a code sample using a "bare With" (that's what I call it, anyway):
With New frmMySubForm
.lblLinkLabel.Links.Add(New LinkLabel.Link With {.Name = "link", .LinkData = "someUrl", .Start = .lblLinkLabel.Text.IndexOf("link"), .Length = "link".Length})
...
End With
But you actually can't code that because in the term .Start = .lblLinkLabel.Text.IndexOf("link") the compiler expects anything starting with . to be a member of LinkLabel.Link, which .lblLinkLabel isn't.
What would be good, I think, is to be able to write something like:
With New frmMySubForm
.lblLinkLabel.Links.Add(New LinkLabel.Link With {.Name = "link", .LinkData = "someUrl", .Start = Me.lblLinkLabel.Text.IndexOf("link"), .Length = "link".Length})
...
End With
where Me in this scope is taken to be New frmMySubForm.
Yes, I realize that I'm being picky and I could easily assign a variable, etc. But the example form is something I use a lot simply out of preference.