Lua Metatables Simulating OOP
Example
local Class = {} -- objects and classes will be tables
local __meta = {__index = Class}
-- ^ if an instance doesn't have a field, try indexing the class
function Class.new()
-- return setmetatable({}, __meta) -- this is shorter and equivalent to:
local new_instance = {}
setmetatable(new_instance, __meta)
return new_instance
end
function Class.print()
print "I am an instance of 'class'"
end
local object = Class.new()
object.print() --> will print "I am an instance of 'class'"
Instance methods can be written by passing the object as the first argument.
-- append to the above example
function Class.sayhello(self)
print("hello, I am ", self)
end
object.sayhello(object) --> will print "hello, I am <table ID>"
object.sayhello() --> will print "hello, I am nil"
There is some syntactic sugar for this.
function Class:saybye(phrase)
print("I am " .. self .. "\n" .. phrase)
end
object:saybye("c ya") --> will print "I am <table ID>
--> c ya"
We can also add default fields to a class.
local Class = {health = 100}
local __meta = {__index = Class}
function Class.new() return setmetatable({}, __meta) end
local object = Class.new()
print(object.health) --> prints 100
Class.health = 50; print(object.health) --> prints 50
-- this should not be done, but it illustrates lua indexes "Class"
-- when "object" doesn't have a certain field
object.health = 200 -- This does NOT index Class
print(object.health) --> prints 200
