luabind deboostified tips and tricks

luabind deboostified is a fork of the luabind project that helps exposing APIs to Lua. As the name implies, it replaces the boost dependency with modern C++, which makes it a lot more pleasant to work with.

Here are a few tips and tricks I learned while working with it. Some tricks might be applicable to the original luabind – I do not know.

1. Splitting module registration

You can split the registration code for different classes. I usually add a register function per class, like this:

struct A {
  void doSomething();
  static luabind::scope registerWithLua();
};

struct B {
  void goodStuff();
  static luabind::scope registerWithLua();
};

You can then combine their registration code into a single module on the Lua side:

void registerAll(lua_State* L) {
  luabind::module(L)[
    A::registerWithLua(),
    B::registerWithLua()];
}

The implementation of a registration function looks like this:

luabind::scope A::registerWithLua()
{
  return luabind::class_<A>("A")
    .def("doSomething", &A::doSomething);
}

2. Multiple policies and multiple return values

Unlike C++, Lua has real multiple return values. You can use that by utilizing the return value policies that luabind offers. Lets say, you want to write this in Lua:

local x, y = a.getPosition()

The C++ side could look like this:

void getPosition(A const& a, float& x, float& y);

The deboostified fork needs its policies supplied in a type list. Let’s use a small helper meta-function to build that:

template <typename... T>
using joined = 
  typename luabind::meta::join<T...>::type;

Once you have that, you can expose it like this:

luabind::def("getPosition", &getPosition,
              joined<
                luabind::pure_out_value<2>,
                luabind::pure_out_value<3>
              >());

3. Specialized data structures using luabind::object

Using the converters in luabind is not the only way to make Lua values from C++. Almost everything you can do in Lua itself, you can do with luabind::object . Here is a somewhat contrived example:

luabind::object repeat(luabind::object what,
                       int count) {
  // Create a new table object
  auto result = luabind::newtable(
    what.interpreter());
  // Fill it as an array [1..N]
  for (int i = 1; i <= count; ++i)
    result[i] = what;
  return result;
}

This function can then be exported via luabind::def and used just like any other function. This is just the tip of the iceberg, though. For example, you can also write functions that, at runtime, behave differently when a number is passed in as when a table is passed in. You can find out the Lua type with luabind::type(myObject) .

Of course, as soon as you want to create new objects to return to Lua, you need the lua_State pointer in that function. Using the interpreter from a passed-in luabind::object is one way, but I have yet to find another pleasant way to do this. It is probably possible to use the policies to do this, and have them pass that in as a special parameter, but for now I am using some complicated machinery to bind lambda functions that capture the Lua interpreter.

That’s it for now..

Keep in mind that these are not thoroughly researched best-practices, but patterns I have used to solve actual problems. There might be better solutions out there – if you know any, please let me know. Hope this helped!