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<title>luabind 0.9.1</title>
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<body>
<div class="document" id="luabind-version">
<h1 class="title">luabind 0.9.1</h1>
<table class="docinfo" frame="void" rules="none">
<col class="docinfo-name" />
<col class="docinfo-content" />
<tbody valign="top">
<tr><th class="docinfo-name">Author:</th>
<td>Daniel Wallin, Arvid Norberg</td></tr>
<tr><th class="docinfo-name">Copyright:</th>
<td>Copyright Daniel Wallin, Arvid Norberg 2003.</td></tr>
<tr class="field"><th class="docinfo-name">License:</th><td class="field-body"><p class="first">Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a
copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"),
to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation
the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense,
and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the
Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:</p>
<p>The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included
in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.</p>
<p class="last">THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF
ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED
TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A
PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT
SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR
ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN
ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE
OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.</p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<div class="contents topic" id="contents">
<p class="topic-title first">Contents</p>
<ul class="auto-toc simple">
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#introduction" id="id46">1 Introduction</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#features" id="id47">2 Features</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#portability" id="id48">3 Portability</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#building-luabind" id="id49">4 Building luabind</a><ul class="auto-toc">
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#prerequisites" id="id50">4.1 Prerequisites</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#windows" id="id51">4.2 Windows</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#linux-and-other-nix-flavors" id="id52">4.3 Linux and other *nix flavors</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#building-and-testing" id="id53">4.4 Building and testing</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#basic-usage" id="id54">5 Basic usage</a><ul class="auto-toc">
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#hello-world" id="id55">5.1 Hello world</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#scopes" id="id56">6 Scopes</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#binding-functions-to-lua" id="id57">7 Binding functions to Lua</a><ul class="auto-toc">
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#overloaded-functions" id="id58">7.1 Overloaded functions</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#signature-matching" id="id59">7.2 Signature matching</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#calling-lua-functions" id="id60">7.3 Calling Lua functions</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#using-lua-threads" id="id61">7.4 Using Lua threads</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#binding-classes-to-lua" id="id62">8 Binding classes to Lua</a><ul class="auto-toc">
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#overloaded-member-functions" id="id63">8.1 Overloaded member functions</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#properties" id="id64">8.2 Properties</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#enums" id="id65">8.3 Enums</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#operators" id="id66">8.4 Operators</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#nested-scopes-and-static-functions" id="id67">8.5 Nested scopes and static functions</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#derived-classes" id="id68">8.6 Derived classes</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#smart-pointers" id="id69">8.7 Smart pointers</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#splitting-class-registrations" id="id70">8.8 Splitting class registrations</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#adding-converters-for-user-defined-types" id="id71">9 Adding converters for user defined types</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#binding-function-objects-with-explicit-signatures" id="id72">10 Binding function objects with explicit signatures</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#object" id="id73">11 Object</a><ul class="auto-toc">
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#iterators" id="id74">11.1 Iterators</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#related-functions" id="id75">11.2 Related functions</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#assigning-nil" id="id76">11.3 Assigning nil</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#defining-classes-in-lua" id="id77">12 Defining classes in Lua</a><ul class="auto-toc">
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#deriving-in-lua" id="id78">12.1 Deriving in lua</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#overloading-operators" id="id79">12.2 Overloading operators</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#finalizers" id="id80">12.3 Finalizers</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#slicing" id="id81">12.4 Slicing</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#exceptions" id="id82">13 Exceptions</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#policies" id="id83">14 Policies</a><ul class="auto-toc">
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#adopt" id="id84">14.1 adopt</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#dependency" id="id85">14.2 dependency</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#out-value" id="id86">14.3 out_value</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#pure-out-value" id="id87">14.4 pure_out_value</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#return-reference-to" id="id88">14.5 return_reference_to</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#copy" id="id89">14.6 copy</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#discard-result" id="id90">14.7 discard_result</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#return-stl-iterator" id="id91">14.8 return_stl_iterator</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#raw" id="id92">14.9 raw</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#yield" id="id93">14.10 yield</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#splitting-up-the-registration" id="id94">15 Splitting up the registration</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#error-handling" id="id95">16 Error Handling</a><ul class="auto-toc">
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#pcall-errorfunc" id="id96">16.1 pcall errorfunc</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#file-and-line-numbers" id="id97">16.2 file and line numbers</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#lua-panic" id="id98">16.3 lua panic</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#structured-exceptions-msvc" id="id99">16.4 structured exceptions (MSVC)</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#error-messages" id="id100">16.5 Error messages</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#build-options" id="id101">17 Build options</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#implementation-notes" id="id102">18 Implementation notes</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#faq" id="id103">19 FAQ</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#known-issues" id="id104">20 Known issues</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#acknowledgments" id="id105">21 Acknowledgments</a></li>
</ul>
</div>
<div class="section" id="introduction">
<h1>1 Introduction</h1>
<p>Luabind is a library that helps you create bindings between C++ and Lua. It has
the ability to expose functions and classes, written in C++, to Lua. It will
also supply the functionality to define classes in Lua and let them derive from
other Lua classes or C++ classes. Lua classes can override virtual functions
from their C++ base classes. It is written towards Lua 5.0, and does not work
with Lua 4.</p>
<p>It is implemented utilizing template meta programming. That means that you
don't need an extra preprocess pass to compile your project (it is done by the
compiler). It also means you don't (usually) have to know the exact signature
of each function you register, since the library will generate code depending
on the compile-time type of the function (which includes the signature). The
main drawback of this approach is that the compilation time will increase for
the file that does the registration, it is therefore recommended that you
register everything in the same cpp-file.</p>
<p>Luabind is released under the terms of the <a class="reference external" href="http://www.opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.php">MIT license</a>.</p>
<p>We are very interested in hearing about projects that use luabind, please let
us know about your project.</p>
<p>The main channel for help and feedback is the <a class="reference external" href="https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/luabind-user">luabind mailing list</a>.
There's also an IRC channel <tt class="docutils literal">#luabind</tt> on irc.freenode.net.</p>
</div>
<div class="section" id="features">
<h1>2 Features</h1>
<p>Luabind supports:</p>
<blockquote>
<ul class="simple">
<li>Overloaded free functions</li>
<li>C++ classes in Lua</li>
<li>Overloaded member functions</li>
<li>Operators</li>
<li>Properties</li>
<li>Enums</li>
<li>Lua functions in C++</li>
<li>Lua classes in C++</li>
<li>Lua classes (single inheritance)</li>
<li>Derives from Lua or C++ classes</li>
<li>Override virtual functions from C++ classes</li>
<li>Implicit casts between registered types</li>
<li>Best match signature matching</li>
<li>Return value policies and parameter policies</li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
</div>
<div class="section" id="portability">
<h1>3 Portability</h1>
<p>Luabind has been tested to work on the following compilers:</p>
<blockquote>
<ul class="simple">
<li>Visual Studio 7.1</li>
<li>Intel C++ 6.0 (Windows)</li>
<li>GCC 2.95.3 (cygwin)</li>
<li>GCC 3.0.4 (Debian/Linux)</li>
<li>GCC 3.1 (SunOS 5.8)</li>
<li>GCC 3.2 (cygwin)</li>
<li>GCC 3.3.1 (cygwin)</li>
<li>GCC 3.3 (Apple, MacOS X)</li>
<li>GCC 4.0 (Apple, MacOS X)</li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
<p>It has been confirmed not to work with:</p>
<blockquote>
<ul class="simple">
<li>GCC 2.95.2 (SunOS 5.8)</li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
<p>Metrowerks 8.3 (Windows) compiles but fails the const-test. This
means that const member functions are treated as non-const member
functions.</p>
<p>If you have tried luabind with a compiler not listed here, let us know
your result with it.</p>
</div>
<div class="section" id="building-luabind">
<h1>4 Building luabind</h1>
<div class="section" id="prerequisites">
<h2>4.1 Prerequisites</h2>
<p>Luabind depends on a number of Boost 1.34 libraries. It also depends on
Boost Jam and Boost Build V2 to build the library and run the tests.
Boost provides <a class="reference external" href="http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=7586&package_id=72941">precompiled bjam binaries</a> for a number of platforms.
If there isn't a precompiled binary available for your platform, you may
need to <a class="reference external" href="http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_36_0/doc/html/jam/building.html">build it yourself</a>.</p>
</div>
<div class="section" id="windows">
<h2>4.2 Windows</h2>
<p>The environment varaible <tt class="docutils literal">LUA_PATH</tt> needs to be set to point to a
directory containing the Lua include directory and built libraries. At
least for the purpose of running the test suite, the recommended way to
get these is the <a class="reference external" href="http://luabinaries.luaforge.net">Lua Binaries</a> <em>Windows x86 DLL and Includes</em> package.</p>
<p>Furthermore, the environment variable <tt class="docutils literal">BOOST_ROOT</tt> must point to
a Boost installation directory.</p>
</div>
<div class="section" id="linux-and-other-nix-flavors">
<h2>4.3 Linux and other *nix flavors</h2>
<p>If your system already has Lua installed, it is very likely that the
build system will automatically find it and just work. If you have
Lua installed in a non-standard location, you may need to set
<tt class="docutils literal">LUA_PATH</tt> to point to the installation prefix.</p>
<p><tt class="docutils literal">BOOST_ROOT</tt> can be set to a Boost installation directory. If left
unset, the build system will try to use boost headers from the standard
include path.</p>
<div class="section" id="macosx">
<h3>4.3.1 MacOSX</h3>
<p>If you have both the 10.4 and 10.5 SDK installed, Boost Build seems to
default to 10.4. Lua, at least when installed from MacPorts, will be
linked with the 10.5 SDK. If the luabind build fails with link errors,
you may need to explicitly build with the 10.5 SDK:</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
$ bjam macosx-version=10.5
</pre>
</div>
</div>
<div class="section" id="building-and-testing">
<h2>4.4 Building and testing</h2>
<p>Building the default variant of the library, which is a shared debug
library, is simply done by invoking <tt class="docutils literal">bjam</tt> in the luabind root
directory:</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
$ bjam
...patience...
...found 714 targets...
...updating 23 targets...
</pre>
<p>When building with GCC on Linux, this results in:</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
bin/gcc-4.2.3/debug/libluabind.so
</pre>
<p>On Windows a dll and matching import library would be produced.</p>
<p>To run the unit tests, invoke <tt class="docutils literal">bjam</tt> with the <tt class="docutils literal">test</tt> target:</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
$ bjam test
</pre>
<p>This will build and run the unit tests in four different variants:
debug, release, debug-static-lib, release-static-lib. A clean test run
output should end with something like:</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
... updated <em>xxx</em> targets...
</pre>
<p>A failed run would end with something like:</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
...failed updating <em>xxx</em> target...
...skipped <em>xxx</em> targets...
</pre>
<p>If you are not using Boost Build to build your application, and want to
use the shared library variant, <tt class="docutils literal">LUABIND_DYNAMIC_LINK</tt> needs to be
defined to properly import symbols.</p>
</div>
</div>
<div class="section" id="basic-usage">
<h1>5 Basic usage</h1>
<p>To use luabind, you must include <tt class="docutils literal">lua.h</tt> and luabind's main header file:</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
extern "C"
{
#include "lua.h"
}
#include <luabind/luabind.hpp>
</pre>
<p>This includes support for both registering classes and functions. If you just
want to have support for functions or classes you can include
<tt class="docutils literal">luabind/function.hpp</tt> and <tt class="docutils literal">luabind/class.hpp</tt> separately:</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
#include <luabind/function.hpp>
#include <luabind/class.hpp>
</pre>
<p>The first thing you need to do is to call <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">luabind::open(lua_State*)</span></tt> which
will register the functions to create classes from Lua, and initialize some
state-global structures used by luabind. If you don't call this function you
will hit asserts later in the library. There is no corresponding close function
because once a class has been registered in Lua, there really isn't any good
way to remove it. Partly because any remaining instances of that class relies
on the class being there. Everything will be cleaned up when the state is
closed though.</p>
<!-- Isn't this wrong? Don't we include lua.h using lua_include.hpp ? -->
<p>Luabind's headers will never include <tt class="docutils literal">lua.h</tt> directly, but through
<tt class="docutils literal"><luabind/lua_include.hpp></tt>. If you for some reason need to include another
Lua header, you can modify this file.</p>
<div class="section" id="hello-world">
<h2>5.1 Hello world</h2>
<pre class="literal-block">
#include <iostream>
#include <luabind/luabind.hpp>
void greet()
{
std::cout << "hello world!\n";
}
extern "C" int init(lua_State* L)
{
using namespace luabind;
open(L);
module(L)
[
def("greet", &greet)
];
return 0;
}
</pre>
<pre class="literal-block">
Lua 5.0 Copyright (C) 1994-2003 Tecgraf, PUC-Rio
> loadlib('hello_world.dll', 'init')()
> greet()
Hello world!
>
</pre>
</div>
</div>
<div class="section" id="scopes">
<h1>6 Scopes</h1>
<p>Everything that gets registered in Lua is registered in a namespace (Lua
tables) or in the global scope (called module). All registrations must be
surrounded by its scope. To define a module, the <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">luabind::module</span></tt> class is
used. It is used like this:</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
module(L)
[
// declarations
];
</pre>
<p>This will register all declared functions or classes in the global namespace in
Lua. If you want to have a namespace for your module (like the standard
libraries) you can give a name to the constructor, like this:</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
module(L, "my_library")
[
// declarations
];
</pre>
<p>Here all declarations will be put in the my_library table.</p>
<p>If you want nested namespace's you can use the <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">luabind::namespace_</span></tt> class. It
works exactly as <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">luabind::module</span></tt> except that it doesn't take a lua_State*
in it's constructor. An example of its usage could look like this:</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
module(L, "my_library")
[
// declarations
namespace_("detail")
[
// library-private declarations
]
];
</pre>
<p>As you might have figured out, the following declarations are equivalent:</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
module(L)
[
namespace_("my_library")
[
// declarations
]
];
</pre>
<pre class="literal-block">
module(L, "my_library")
[
// declarations
];
</pre>
<p>Each declaration must be separated by a comma, like this:</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
module(L)
[
def("f", &f),
def("g", &g),
class_<A>("A")
.def(constructor<int, int>),
def("h", &h)
];
</pre>
<p>More about the actual declarations in the <a class="reference internal" href="#binding-functions-to-lua">Binding functions to Lua</a> and
<a class="reference internal" href="#binding-classes-to-lua">Binding classes to Lua</a> sections.</p>
<p>A word of caution, if you are in really bad need for performance, putting your
functions in tables will increase the lookup time.</p>
</div>
<div class="section" id="binding-functions-to-lua">
<h1>7 Binding functions to Lua</h1>
<p>To bind functions to Lua you use the function <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">luabind::def()</span></tt>. It has the
following synopsis:</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
template<class F, class policies>
void def(const char* name, F f, const Policies&);
</pre>
<ul class="simple">
<li>name is the name the function will have within Lua.</li>
<li>F is the function pointer you want to register.</li>
<li>The Policies parameter is used to describe how parameters and return values
are treated by the function, this is an optional parameter. More on this in
the <a class="reference internal" href="#policies">policies</a> section.</li>
</ul>
<p>An example usage could be if you want to register the function <tt class="docutils literal">float
<span class="pre">std::sin(float)</span></tt>:</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
module(L)
[
def("sin", &std::sin)
];
</pre>
<div class="section" id="overloaded-functions">
<h2>7.1 Overloaded functions</h2>
<p>If you have more than one function with the same name, and want to register
them in Lua, you have to explicitly give the signature. This is to let C++ know
which function you refer to. For example, if you have two functions, <tt class="docutils literal">int
f(const char*)</tt> and <tt class="docutils literal">void f(int)</tt>.</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
module(L)
[
def("f", (int(*)(const char*)) &f),
def("f", (void(*)(int)) &f)
];
</pre>
</div>
<div class="section" id="signature-matching">
<h2>7.2 Signature matching</h2>
<p>luabind will generate code that checks the Lua stack to see if the values there
can match your functions' signatures. It will handle implicit typecasts between
derived classes, and it will prefer matches with the least number of implicit
casts. In a function call, if the function is overloaded and there's no
overload that match the parameters better than the other, you have an
ambiguity. This will spawn a run-time error, stating that the function call is
ambiguous. A simple example of this is to register one function that takes an
int and one that takes a float. Since Lua doesn't distinguish between floats and
integers, both will always match.</p>
<p>Since all overloads are tested, it will always find the best match (not the
first match). This also means that it can handle situations where the only
difference in the signature is that one member function is const and the other
isn't.</p>
<div class="sidebar">
<p class="first sidebar-title">Ownership transfer</p>
<p class="last">To correctly handle ownership transfer, create_a() would need an adopt
return value policy. More on this in the <a class="reference internal" href="#policies">Policies</a> section.</p>
</div>
<p>For example, if the following function and class is registered:</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
struct A
{
void f();
void f() const;
};
const A* create_a();
struct B: A {};
struct C: B {};
void g(A*);
void g(B*);
</pre>
<p>And the following Lua code is executed:</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
a1 = create_a()
a1:f() -- the const version is called
a2 = A()
a2:f() -- the non-const version is called
a = A()
b = B()
c = C()
g(a) -- calls g(A*)
g(b) -- calls g(B*)
g(c) -- calls g(B*)
</pre>
</div>
<div class="section" id="calling-lua-functions">
<h2>7.3 Calling Lua functions</h2>
<p>To call a Lua function, you can either use <tt class="docutils literal">call_function()</tt> or
an <tt class="docutils literal">object</tt>.</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
template<class Ret>
Ret call_function(lua_State* L, const char* name, ...)
template<class Ret>
Ret call_function(object const& obj, ...)
</pre>
<p>There are two overloads of the <tt class="docutils literal">call_function</tt> function, one that calls
a function given its name, and one that takes an object that should be a Lua
value that can be called as a function.</p>
<p>The overload that takes a name can only call global Lua functions. The ...
represents a variable number of parameters that are sent to the Lua
function. This function call may throw <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">luabind::error</span></tt> if the function
call fails.</p>
<p>The return value isn't actually Ret (the template parameter), but a proxy
object that will do the function call. This enables you to give policies to the
call. You do this with the operator[]. You give the policies within the
brackets, like this:</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
int ret = call_function<int>(
L
, "a_lua_function"
, new complex_class()
)[ adopt(_1) ];
</pre>
<p>If you want to pass a parameter as a reference, you have to wrap it with the
<a class="reference external" href="http://www.boost.org/doc/html/ref.html">Boost.Ref</a>.</p>
<p>Like this:</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
int ret = call_function(L, "fun", boost::ref(val));
</pre>
<p>If you want to use a custom error handler for the function call, see
<tt class="docutils literal">set_pcall_callback</tt> under <a class="reference internal" href="#pcall-errorfunc">pcall errorfunc</a>.</p>
</div>
<div class="section" id="using-lua-threads">
<h2>7.4 Using Lua threads</h2>
<p>To start a Lua thread, you have to call <tt class="docutils literal">lua_resume()</tt>, this means that you
cannot use the previous function <tt class="docutils literal">call_function()</tt> to start a thread. You have
to use</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
template<class Ret>
Ret resume_function(lua_State* L, const char* name, ...)
template<class Ret>
Ret resume_function(object const& obj, ...)
</pre>
<p>and</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
template<class Ret>
Ret resume(lua_State* L, ...)
</pre>
<p>The first time you start the thread, you have to give it a function to execute. i.e. you
have to use <tt class="docutils literal">resume_function</tt>, when the Lua function yields, it will return the first
value passed in to <tt class="docutils literal">lua_yield()</tt>. When you want to continue the execution, you just call
<tt class="docutils literal">resume()</tt> on your <tt class="docutils literal">lua_State</tt>, since it's already executing a function, you don't pass
it one. The parameters to <tt class="docutils literal">resume()</tt> will be returned by <tt class="docutils literal">yield()</tt> on the Lua side.</p>
<p>For yielding C++-functions (without the support of passing data back and forth between the
Lua side and the c++ side), you can use the <a class="reference internal" href="#yield">yield</a> policy.</p>
<p>With the overload of <tt class="docutils literal">resume_function</tt> that takes an <a class="reference internal" href="#object">object</a>, it is important that the
object was constructed with the thread as its <tt class="docutils literal">lua_State*</tt>. Like this:</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
lua_State* thread = lua_newthread(L);
object fun = get_global(<strong>thread</strong>)["my_thread_fun"];
resume_function(fun);
</pre>
</div>
</div>
<div class="section" id="binding-classes-to-lua">
<h1>8 Binding classes to Lua</h1>
<p>To register classes you use a class called <tt class="docutils literal">class_</tt>. Its name is supposed to
resemble the C++ keyword, to make it look more intuitive. It has an overloaded
member function <tt class="docutils literal">def()</tt> that is used to register member functions, operators,
constructors, enums and properties on the class. It will return its
this-pointer, to let you register more members directly.</p>
<p>Let's start with a simple example. Consider the following C++ class:</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
class testclass
{
public:
testclass(const std::string& s): m_string(s) {}
void print_string() { std::cout << m_string << "\n"; }
private:
std::string m_string;
};
</pre>
<p>To register it with a Lua environment, write as follows (assuming you are using
namespace luabind):</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
module(L)
[
class_<testclass>("testclass")
.def(constructor<const std::string&>())
.def("print_string", &testclass::print_string)
];
</pre>
<p>This will register the class with the name testclass and constructor that takes
a string as argument and one member function with the name <tt class="docutils literal">print_string</tt>.</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
Lua 5.0 Copyright (C) 1994-2003 Tecgraf, PUC-Rio
> a = testclass('a string')
> a:print_string()
a string
</pre>
<p>It is also possible to register free functions as member functions. The
requirement on the function is that it takes a pointer, const pointer,
reference or const reference to the class type as the first parameter. The rest
of the parameters are the ones that are visible in Lua, while the object
pointer is given as the first parameter. If we have the following C++ code:</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
struct A
{
int a;
};
int plus(A* o, int v) { return o->a + v; }
</pre>
<p>You can register <tt class="docutils literal">plus()</tt> as if it was a member function of A like this:</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
class_<A>("A")
.def("plus", &plus)
</pre>
<p><tt class="docutils literal">plus()</tt> can now be called as a member function on A with one parameter, int.
If the object pointer parameter is const, the function will act as if it was a
const member function (it can be called on const objects).</p>
<div class="section" id="overloaded-member-functions">
<h2>8.1 Overloaded member functions</h2>
<p>When binding more than one overloads of a member function, or just binding
one overload of an overloaded member function, you have to disambiguate
the member function pointer you pass to <tt class="docutils literal">def</tt>. To do this, you can use an
ordinary C-style cast, to cast it to the right overload. To do this, you have
to know how to express member function types in C++, here's a short tutorial
(for more info, refer to your favorite book on C++).</p>
<p>The syntax for member function pointer follows:</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
<em>return-value</em> (<em>class-name</em>::*)(<em>arg1-type</em>, <em>arg2-type</em>, <em>...</em>)
</pre>
<p>Here's an example illlustrating this:</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
struct A
{
void f(int);
void f(int, int);
};
</pre>
<pre class="literal-block">
class_<A>()
.def("f", (void(A::*)(int))&A::f)
</pre>
<p>This selects the first overload of the function <tt class="docutils literal">f</tt> to bind. The second
overload is not bound.</p>
</div>
<div class="section" id="properties">
<h2>8.2 Properties</h2>
<p>To register a global data member with a class is easily done. Consider the
following class:</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
struct A
{
int a;
};
</pre>
<p>This class is registered like this:</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
module(L)
[
class_<A>("A")
.def_readwrite("a", &A::a)
];
</pre>
<p>This gives read and write access to the member variable <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">A::a</span></tt>. It is also
possible to register attributes with read-only access:</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
module(L)
[
class_<A>("A")
.def_readonly("a", &A::a)
];
</pre>
<p>When binding members that are a non-primitive type, the auto generated getter
function will return a reference to it. This is to allow chained .-operators.
For example, when having a struct containing another struct. Like this:</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
struct A { int m; };
struct B { A a; };
</pre>
<p>When binding <tt class="docutils literal">B</tt> to lua, the following expression code should work:</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
b = B()
b.a.m = 1
assert(b.a.m == 1)
</pre>
<p>This requires the first lookup (on <tt class="docutils literal">a</tt>) to return a reference to <tt class="docutils literal">A</tt>, and
not a copy. In that case, luabind will automatically use the dependency policy
to make the return value dependent on the object in which it is stored. So, if
the returned reference lives longer than all references to the object (b in
this case) it will keep the object alive, to avoid being a dangling pointer.</p>
<p>You can also register getter and setter functions and make them look as if they
were a public data member. Consider the following class:</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
class A
{
public:
void set_a(int x) { a = x; }
int get_a() const { return a; }
private:
int a;
};
</pre>
<p>It can be registered as if it had a public data member a like this:</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
class_<A>("A")
.property("a", &A::get_a, &A::set_a)
</pre>
<p>This way the <tt class="docutils literal">get_a()</tt> and <tt class="docutils literal">set_a()</tt> functions will be called instead of
just writing to the data member. If you want to make it read only you can just
omit the last parameter. Please note that the get function <strong>has to be
const</strong>, otherwise it won't compile. This seems to be a common source of errors.</p>
</div>
<div class="section" id="enums">
<h2>8.3 Enums</h2>
<p>If your class contains enumerated constants (enums), you can register them as
well to make them available in Lua. Note that they will not be type safe, all
enums are integers in Lua, and all functions that takes an enum, will accept
any integer. You register them like this:</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
module(L)
[
class_<A>("A")
.enum_("constants")
[
value("my_enum", 4),
value("my_2nd_enum", 7),
value("another_enum", 6)
]
];
</pre>
<p>In Lua they are accessed like any data member, except that they are read-only
and reached on the class itself rather than on an instance of the class.</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
Lua 5.0 Copyright (C) 1994-2003 Tecgraf, PUC-Rio
> print(A.my_enum)
4
> print(A.another_enum)
6
</pre>
</div>
<div class="section" id="operators">
<h2>8.4 Operators</h2>
<p>To bind operators you have to include <tt class="docutils literal"><luabind/operator.hpp></tt>.</p>
<p>The mechanism for registering operators on your class is pretty simple. You use
a global name <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">luabind::self</span></tt> to refer to the class itself and then you just
write the operator expression inside the <tt class="docutils literal">def()</tt> call. This class:</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
struct vec
{
vec operator+(int s);
};
</pre>
<p>Is registered like this:</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
module(L)
[
class_<vec>("vec")
.def(<strong>self + int()</strong>)
];
</pre>
<p>This will work regardless if your plus operator is defined inside your class or
as a free function.</p>
<p>If your operator is const (or, when defined as a free function, takes a const
reference to the class itself) you have to use <tt class="docutils literal">const_self</tt> instead of
<tt class="docutils literal">self</tt>. Like this:</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
module(L)
[
class_<vec>("vec")
.def(<strong>const_self</strong> + int())
];
</pre>
<p>The operators supported are those available in Lua:</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
+ - * / == < <=
</pre>
<p>This means, no in-place operators. The equality operator (<tt class="docutils literal">==</tt>) has a little
hitch; it will not be called if the references are equal. This means that the
<tt class="docutils literal">==</tt> operator has to do pretty much what's it's expected to do.</p>
<p>Lua does not support operators such as <tt class="docutils literal">!=</tt>, <tt class="docutils literal">></tt> or <tt class="docutils literal">>=</tt>. That's why you
can only register the operators listed above. When you invoke one of the
mentioned operators, lua will define it in terms of one of the available
operators.</p>
<p>In the above example the other operand type is instantiated by writing
<tt class="docutils literal">int()</tt>. If the operand type is a complex type that cannot easily be
instantiated you can wrap the type in a class called <tt class="docutils literal">other<></tt>. For example:</p>
<p>To register this class, we don't want to instantiate a string just to register
the operator.</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
struct vec
{
vec operator+(std::string);
};
</pre>
<p>Instead we use the <tt class="docutils literal">other<></tt> wrapper like this:</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
module(L)
[
class_<vec>("vec")
.def(self + <strong>other<std::string>()</strong>)
];
</pre>
<p>To register an application (function call-) operator:</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
module(L)
[
class_<vec>("vec")
.def( <strong>self(int())</strong> )
];
</pre>
<p>There's one special operator. In Lua it's called <tt class="docutils literal">__tostring</tt>, it's not
really an operator. It is used for converting objects to strings in a standard
way in Lua. If you register this functionality, you will be able to use the lua
standard function <tt class="docutils literal">tostring()</tt> for converting your object to a string.</p>
<p>To implement this operator in C++ you should supply an <tt class="docutils literal">operator<<</tt> for
std::ostream. Like this example:</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
class number {};
std::ostream& operator<<(std::ostream&, number&);
...
module(L)
[
class_<number>("number")
.def(<strong>tostring(self)</strong>)
];
</pre>
</div>
<div class="section" id="nested-scopes-and-static-functions">
<h2>8.5 Nested scopes and static functions</h2>
<p>It is possible to add nested scopes to a class. This is useful when you need
to wrap a nested class, or a static function.</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
class_<foo>("foo")
.def(constructor<>())
<strong>.scope
[
class_<inner>("nested"),
def("f", &f)
]</strong>;
</pre>
<p>In this example, <tt class="docutils literal">f</tt> will behave like a static member function of the class
<tt class="docutils literal">foo</tt>, and the class <tt class="docutils literal">nested</tt> will behave like a nested class of <tt class="docutils literal">foo</tt>.</p>
<p>It's also possible to add namespaces to classes using the same syntax.</p>
</div>
<div class="section" id="derived-classes">
<h2>8.6 Derived classes</h2>
<p>If you want to register classes that derives from other classes, you can
specify a template parameter <tt class="docutils literal">bases<></tt> to the <tt class="docutils literal">class_</tt> instantiation. The
following hierarchy:</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
struct A {};
struct B : A {};
</pre>
<p>Would be registered like this:</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
module(L)
[
class_<A>("A"),
class_<B, A>("B")
];
</pre>
<p>If you have multiple inheritance you can specify more than one base. If B would
also derive from a class C, it would be registered like this:</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
module(L)
[
class_<B, bases<A, C> >("B")
];
</pre>
<p>Note that you can omit <tt class="docutils literal">bases<></tt> when using single inheritance.</p>
<div class="note">
<p class="first admonition-title">Note</p>
<p class="last">If you don't specify that classes derive from each other, luabind will not
be able to implicitly cast pointers between the types.</p>
</div>
</div>
<div class="section" id="smart-pointers">
<h2>8.7 Smart pointers</h2>
<p>When registering a class you can tell luabind to hold all instances
explicitly created in Lua in a specific smart pointer type, rather than
the default raw pointer. This is done by passing an additional template
parameter to <tt class="docutils literal">class_</tt>:</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
class_<X, <strong>P</strong>>(…)
</pre>
<p>Where the requirements of <tt class="docutils literal">P</tt> are:</p>
<table border="1" class="docutils">
<colgroup>
<col width="38%" />
<col width="62%" />
</colgroup>
<thead valign="bottom">
<tr><th class="head">Expression</th>
<th class="head">Returns</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody valign="top">
<tr><td><tt class="docutils literal">P(raw)</tt></td>
<td> </td>
</tr>
<tr><td><tt class="docutils literal">get_pointer(p)</tt></td>
<td>Convertible to <tt class="docutils literal">X*</tt></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p>where:</p>
<ul class="simple">
<li><tt class="docutils literal">raw</tt> is of type <tt class="docutils literal">X*</tt></li>
<li><tt class="docutils literal">p</tt> is an instance of <tt class="docutils literal">P</tt></li>
</ul>
<p><tt class="docutils literal">get_pointer()</tt> overloads are provided for the smart pointers in
Boost, and <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">std::auto_ptr<></span></tt>. Should you need to provide your own
overload, note that it is called unqualified and is expected to be found
by <em>argument dependent lookup</em>. Thus it should be defined in the same
namespace as the pointer type it operates on.</p>
<p>For example:</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
class_<X, <strong>boost::scoped_ptr<X></strong> >("X")
.def(constructor<>())
</pre>
<p>Will cause luabind to hold any instance created on the Lua side in a
<tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">boost::scoped_ptr<X></span></tt>. Note that this doesn't mean <strong>all</strong> instances
will be held by a <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">boost::scoped_ptr<X></span></tt>. If, for example, you
register a function:</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
std::auto_ptr<X> make_X();
</pre>
<p>the instance returned by that will be held in <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">std::auto_ptr<X></span></tt>. This
is handled automatically for all smart pointers that implement a
<tt class="docutils literal">get_pointer()</tt> overload.</p>
<div class="important">
<p class="first admonition-title">Important</p>
<p class="last"><tt class="docutils literal">get_const_holder()</tt> has been removed. Automatic conversions
between <tt class="docutils literal">smart_ptr<X></tt> and <tt class="docutils literal">smart_ptr<X const></tt> no longer work.</p>
</div>
<div class="important">
<p class="first admonition-title">Important</p>
<p><tt class="docutils literal">__ok</tt> has been removed. Similar functionality can be implemented
for specific pointer types by doing something along the lines of:</p>
<pre class="last literal-block">
bool is_non_null(std::auto_ptr<X> const& p)
{
return p.get();
}
…
def("is_non_null", &is_non_null)
</pre>
</div>
<p>When registering a hierarchy of classes, where all instances are to be held
by a smart pointer, all the classes should have the baseclass' holder type.
Like this:</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
module(L)
[
class_<base, boost::shared_ptr<base> >("base")
.def(constructor<>()),
class_<derived, base, <strong>boost::shared_ptr<base></strong> >("base")
.def(constructor<>())
];
</pre>
<p>Internally, luabind will do the necessary conversions on the raw pointers, which
are first extracted from the holder type.</p>
</div>
<div class="section" id="splitting-class-registrations">
<h2>8.8 Splitting class registrations</h2>
<p>In some situations it may be desirable to split a registration of a class
across different compilation units. Partly to save rebuild time when changing
in one part of the binding, and in some cases compiler limits may force you
to split it. To do this is very simple. Consider the following sample code:</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
void register_part1(class_<X>& x)
{
x.def(/*...*/);
}
void register_part2(class_<X>& x)
{
x.def(/*...*/);
}
void register_(lua_State* L)
{
class_<X> x("x");
register_part1(x);
register_part2(x);
module(L) [ x ];
}
</pre>
<p>Here, the class <tt class="docutils literal">X</tt> is registered in two steps. The two functions
<tt class="docutils literal">register_part1</tt> and <tt class="docutils literal">register_part2</tt> may be put in separate compilation
units.</p>
<p>To separate the module registration and the classes to be registered, see
<a class="reference internal" href="#splitting-up-the-registration">Splitting up the registration</a>.</p>
</div>
</div>
<div class="section" id="adding-converters-for-user-defined-types">
<h1>9 Adding converters for user defined types</h1>
<p>It is possible to get luabind to handle user defined types like it does
the built in types by specializing <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">luabind::default_converter<></span></tt>:</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
struct int_wrapper
{
int_wrapper(int value)
: value(value)
{}
int value;
};
namespace luabind
{
template <>
struct default_converter<X>
: native_converter_base<X>
{
static int compute_score(lua_State* L, int index)
{
return lua_type(L, index) == LUA_TNUMBER ? 0 : -1;
}
X from(lua_State* L, int index)
{
return X(lua_tonumber(L, index));
}
void to(lua_State* L, X const& x)
{
lua_pushnumber(L, x.value);
}
};
template <>
struct default_converter<X const&>
: default_converter<X>
{};
}
</pre>
<p>Note that <tt class="docutils literal">default_converter<></tt> is instantiated for the actual argument and
return types of the bound functions. In the above example, we add a
specialization for <tt class="docutils literal">X const&</tt> that simply forwards to the <tt class="docutils literal">X</tt> converter.
This lets us export functions which accept <tt class="docutils literal">X</tt> by const reference.</p>
<p><tt class="docutils literal">native_converter_base<></tt> should be used as the base class for the
specialized converters. It simplifies the converter interface, and
provides a mean for backward compatibility since the underlying
interface is in flux.</p>
</div>
<div class="section" id="binding-function-objects-with-explicit-signatures">
<h1>10 Binding function objects with explicit signatures</h1>
<p>Using <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">luabind::tag_function<></span></tt> it is possible to export function objects
from which luabind can't automatically deduce a signature. This can be used to
slightly alter the signature of a bound function, or even to bind stateful
function objects.</p>
<p>Synopsis:</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
template <class Signature, class F>
<em>implementation-defined</em> tag_function(F f);
</pre>
<p>Where <tt class="docutils literal">Signature</tt> is a function type describing the signature of <tt class="docutils literal">F</tt>.
It can be used like this:</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
int f(int x);
// alter the signature so that the return value is ignored
def("f", tag_function<void(int)>(f));
struct plus
{
plus(int x)
: x(x)
{}
int operator()(int y) const
{
return x + y;
}
};
// bind a stateful function object
def("plus3", tag_function<int(int)>(plus(3)));
</pre>
</div>
<div class="section" id="object">
<h1>11 Object</h1>
<p>Since functions have to be able to take Lua values (of variable type) we need a
wrapper around them. This wrapper is called <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">luabind::object</span></tt>. If the
function you register takes an object, it will match any Lua value. To use it,
you need to include <tt class="docutils literal"><luabind/object.hpp></tt>.</p>
<div class="topic">
<p class="topic-title first">Synopsis</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
class object
{
public:
template<class T>
object(lua_State*, T const& value);
object(from_stack const&);
object(object const&);
object();
~object();
lua_State* interpreter() const;
void push() const;
bool is_valid() const;
operator <em>safe_bool_type</em> () const;
template<class Key>
<em>implementation-defined</em> operator[](Key const&);
template<class T>
object& operator=(T const&);
object& operator=(object const&);
bool operator==(object const&) const;
bool operator<(object const&) const;
bool operator<=(object const&) const;
bool operator>(object const&) const;
bool operator>=(object const&) const;
bool operator!=(object const&) const;
template <class T>
<em>implementation-defined</em> operator[](T const& key) const
void swap(object&);
<em>implementation-defined</em> operator()();
template<class A0>
<em>implementation-defined</em> operator()(A0 const& a0);
template<class A0, class A1>
<em>implementation-defined</em> operator()(A0 const& a0, A1 const& a1);
/* ... */
};
</pre>
</div>
<p>When you have a Lua object, you can assign it a new value with the assignment
operator (=). When you do this, the <tt class="docutils literal">default_policy</tt> will be used to make the
conversion from C++ value to Lua. If your <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">luabind::object</span></tt> is a table you
can access its members through the operator[] or the <a class="reference internal" href="#iterators">Iterators</a>. The value
returned from the operator[] is a proxy object that can be used both for
reading and writing values into the table (using operator=).</p>
<p>Note that it is impossible to know if a Lua value is indexable or not
(<tt class="docutils literal">lua_gettable</tt> doesn't fail, it succeeds or crashes). This means that if
you're trying to index something that cannot be indexed, you're on your own.
Lua will call its <tt class="docutils literal">panic()</tt> function. See <a class="reference internal" href="#lua-panic">lua panic</a>.</p>
<p>There are also free functions that can be used for indexing the table, see
<a class="reference internal" href="#related-functions">Related functions</a>.</p>
<p>The constructor that takes a <tt class="docutils literal">from_stack</tt> object is used when you want to
initialize the object with a value from the lua stack. The <tt class="docutils literal">from_stack</tt>
type has the following constructor:</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
from_stack(lua_State* L, int index);
</pre>
<p>The index is an ordinary lua stack index, negative values are indexed from the
top of the stack. You use it like this:</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
object o(from_stack(L, -1));
</pre>
<p>This will create the object <tt class="docutils literal">o</tt> and copy the value from the top of the lua stack.</p>
<p>The <tt class="docutils literal">interpreter()</tt> function returns the Lua state where this object is stored.
If you want to manipulate the object with Lua functions directly you can push
it onto the Lua stack by calling <tt class="docutils literal">push()</tt>.</p>
<p>The operator== will call lua_equal() on the operands and return its result.</p>
<p>The <tt class="docutils literal">is_valid()</tt> function tells you whether the object has been initialized
or not. When created with its default constructor, objects are invalid. To make
an object valid, you can assign it a value. If you want to invalidate an object
you can simply assign it an invalid object.</p>
<p>The <tt class="docutils literal">operator safe_bool_type()</tt> is equivalent to <tt class="docutils literal">is_valid()</tt>. This means
that these snippets are equivalent:</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
object o;
// ...
if (o)
{
// ...
}
...
object o;
// ...
if (o.is_valid())
{
// ...
}
</pre>
<p>The application operator will call the value as if it was a function. You can
give it any number of parameters (currently the <tt class="docutils literal">default_policy</tt> will be used
for the conversion). The returned object refers to the return value (currently
only one return value is supported). This operator may throw <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">luabind::error</span></tt>
if the function call fails. If you want to specify policies to your function
call, you can use index-operator (operator[]) on the function call, and give
the policies within the [ and ]. Like this:</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
my_function_object(
2
, 8
, new my_complex_structure(6)
) [ adopt(_3) ];
</pre>
<p>This tells luabind to make Lua adopt the ownership and responsibility for the
pointer passed in to the lua-function.</p>
<p>It's important that all instances of object have been destructed by the time
the Lua state is closed. The object will keep a pointer to the lua state and
release its Lua object in its destructor.</p>
<p>Here's an example of how a function can use a table:</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
void my_function(object const& table)
{
if (type(table) == LUA_TTABLE)
{
table["time"] = std::clock();
table["name"] = std::rand() < 500 ? "unusual" : "usual";
std::cout << object_cast<std::string>(table[5]) << "\n";
}
}
</pre>
<p>If you take a <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">luabind::object</span></tt> as a parameter to a function, any Lua value
will match that parameter. That's why we have to make sure it's a table before
we index into it.</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
std::ostream& operator<<(std::ostream&, object const&);
</pre>
<p>There's a stream operator that makes it possible to print objects or use
<tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">boost::lexical_cast</span></tt> to convert it to a string. This will use lua's string
conversion function. So if you convert a C++ object with a <tt class="docutils literal">tostring</tt>
operator, the stream operator for that type will be used.</p>
<div class="section" id="iterators">
<h2>11.1 Iterators</h2>
<p>There are two kinds of iterators. The normal iterator that will use the metamethod
of the object (if there is any) when the value is retrieved. This iterator is simply
called <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">luabind::iterator</span></tt>. The other iterator is called <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">luabind::raw_iterator</span></tt>
and will bypass the metamethod and give the true contents of the table. They have
identical interfaces, which implements the <a class="reference external" href="http://www.sgi.com/tech/stl/ForwardIterator.html">ForwardIterator</a> concept. Apart from
the members of standard iterators, they have the following members and constructors:</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
class iterator
{
iterator();
iterator(object const&);
object key() const;
<em>standard iterator members</em>
};
</pre>
<p>The constructor that takes a <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">luabind::object</span></tt> is actually a template that can be
used with object. Passing an object as the parameter to the iterator will
construct the iterator to refer to the first element in the object.</p>
<p>The default constructor will initialize the iterator to the one-past-end
iterator. This is used to test for the end of the sequence.</p>
<p>The value type of the iterator is an implementation defined proxy type which
supports the same operations as <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">luabind::object</span></tt>. Which means that in most
cases you can just treat it as an ordinary object. The difference is that any
assignments to this proxy will result in the value being inserted at the
iterators position, in the table.</p>
<p>The <tt class="docutils literal">key()</tt> member returns the key used by the iterator when indexing the
associated Lua table.</p>
<p>An example using iterators:</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
for (iterator i(globals(L)["a"]), end; i != end; ++i)
{
*i = 1;
}
</pre>
<p>The iterator named <tt class="docutils literal">end</tt> will be constructed using the default constructor
and hence refer to the end of the sequence. This example will simply iterate
over the entries in the global table <tt class="docutils literal">a</tt> and set all its values to 1.</p>
</div>
<div class="section" id="related-functions">
<h2>11.2 Related functions</h2>
<p>There are a couple of functions related to objects and tables.</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
int type(object const&);
</pre>
<p>This function will return the lua type index of the given object.
i.e. <tt class="docutils literal">LUA_TNIL</tt>, <tt class="docutils literal">LUA_TNUMBER</tt> etc.</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
template<class T, class K>
void settable(object const& o, K const& key, T const& value);
template<class K>
object gettable(object const& o, K const& key);
template<class T, class K>
void rawset(object const& o, K const& key, T const& value);
template<class K>
object rawget(object const& o, K const& key);
</pre>
<p>These functions are used for indexing into tables. <tt class="docutils literal">settable</tt> and <tt class="docutils literal">gettable</tt>
translates into calls to <tt class="docutils literal">lua_settable</tt> and <tt class="docutils literal">lua_gettable</tt> respectively. Which
means that you could just as well use the index operator of the object.</p>
<p><tt class="docutils literal">rawset</tt> and <tt class="docutils literal">rawget</tt> will translate into calls to <tt class="docutils literal">lua_rawset</tt> and
<tt class="docutils literal">lua_rawget</tt> respectively. So they will bypass any metamethod and give you the
true value of the table entry.</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
template<class T>
T object_cast<T>(object const&);
template<class T, class Policies>
T object_cast<T>(object const&, Policies);
template<class T>
boost::optional<T> object_cast_nothrow<T>(object const&);
template<class T, class Policies>
boost::optional<T> object_cast_nothrow<T>(object const&, Policies);
</pre>
<p>The <tt class="docutils literal">object_cast</tt> function casts the value of an object to a C++ value.
You can supply a policy to handle the conversion from lua to C++. If the cast
cannot be made a <tt class="docutils literal">cast_failed</tt> exception will be thrown. If you have
defined LUABIND_NO_ERROR_CHECKING (see <a class="reference internal" href="#build-options">Build options</a>) no checking will occur,
and if the cast is invalid the application may very well crash. The nothrow
versions will return an uninitialized <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">boost::optional<T></span></tt> object, to
indicate that the cast could not be performed.</p>
<p>The function signatures of all of the above functions are really templates
for the object parameter, but the intention is that you should only pass
objects in there, that's why it's left out of the documentation.</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
object globals(lua_State*);
object registry(lua_State*);
</pre>
<p>These functions return the global environment table and the registry table respectively.</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
object newtable(lua_State*);
</pre>
<p>This function creates a new table and returns it as an object.</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
object getmetatable(object const& obj);
void setmetatable(object const& obj, object const& metatable);
</pre>
<p>These functions get and set the metatable of a Lua object.</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
lua_CFunction tocfunction(object const& value);
template <class T> T* touserdata(object const& value)
</pre>
<p>These extract values from the object at a lower level than <tt class="docutils literal">object_cast()</tt>.</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
object getupvalue(object const& function, int index);
void setupvalue(object const& function, int index, object const& value);
</pre>
<p>These get and set the upvalues of <tt class="docutils literal">function</tt>.</p>
</div>
<div class="section" id="assigning-nil">
<h2>11.3 Assigning nil</h2>
<p>To set a table entry to <tt class="docutils literal">nil</tt>, you can use <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">luabind::nil</span></tt>. It will avoid
having to take the detour by first assigning <tt class="docutils literal">nil</tt> to an object and then
assign that to the table entry. It will simply result in a <tt class="docutils literal">lua_pushnil()</tt>
call, instead of copying an object.</p>
<p>Example:</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
using luabind;
object table = newtable(L);
table["foo"] = "bar";
// now, clear the "foo"-field
table["foo"] = nil;
</pre>
</div>
</div>
<div class="section" id="defining-classes-in-lua">
<h1>12 Defining classes in Lua</h1>
<p>In addition to binding C++ functions and classes with Lua, luabind also provide
an OO-system in Lua.</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
class 'lua_testclass'
function lua_testclass:__init(name)
self.name = name
end
function lua_testclass:print()
print(self.name)
end
a = lua_testclass('example')
a:print()
</pre>
<p>Inheritance can be used between lua-classes:</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
class 'derived' (lua_testclass)
function derived:__init()
lua_testclass.__init(self, 'derived name')
end
function derived:print()
print('Derived:print() -> ')
lua_testclass.print(self)
end
</pre>
<p>The base class is initialized explicitly by calling its <tt class="docutils literal">__init()</tt>
function.</p>
<p>As you can see in this example, you can call the base class member functions.
You can find all member functions in the base class, but you will have to give
the this-pointer (<tt class="docutils literal">self</tt>) as first argument.</p>
<div class="section" id="deriving-in-lua">
<h2>12.1 Deriving in lua</h2>
<p>It is also possible to derive Lua classes from C++ classes, and override
virtual functions with Lua functions. To do this we have to create a wrapper
class for our C++ base class. This is the class that will hold the Lua object
when we instantiate a Lua class.</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
class base
{
public:
base(const char* s)
{ std::cout << s << "\n"; }
virtual void f(int a)
{ std::cout << "f(" << a << ")\n"; }
};
struct base_wrapper : base, luabind::wrap_base
{
base_wrapper(const char* s)
: base(s)
{}
virtual void f(int a)
{
call<void>("f", a);
}
static void default_f(base* ptr, int a)
{
return ptr->base::f(a);
}
};
...
module(L)
[
class_<base, base_wrapper>("base")
.def(constructor<const char*>())
.def("f", &base::f, &base_wrapper::default_f)
];
</pre>
<div class="important">
<p class="first admonition-title">Important</p>
<p class="last">Since MSVC6.5 doesn't support explicit template parameters
to member functions, instead of using the member function <tt class="docutils literal">call()</tt>
you call a free function <tt class="docutils literal">call_member()</tt> and pass the this-pointer
as first parameter.</p>
</div>
<p>Note that if you have both base classes and a base class wrapper, you must give
both bases and the base class wrapper type as template parameter to
<tt class="docutils literal">class_</tt> (as done in the example above). The order in which you specify
them is not important. You must also register both the static version and the
virtual version of the function from the wrapper, this is necessary in order
to allow luabind to use both dynamic and static dispatch when calling the function.</p>
<div class="important">
<p class="first admonition-title">Important</p>
<p class="last">It is extremely important that the signatures of the static (default) function
is identical to the virtual function. The fact that one of them is a free
function and the other a member function doesn't matter, but the parameters
as seen from lua must match. It would not have worked if the static function
took a <tt class="docutils literal">base_wrapper*</tt> as its first argument, since the virtual function
takes a <tt class="docutils literal">base*</tt> as its first argument (its this pointer). There's currently
no check in luabind to make sure the signatures match.</p>
</div>
<p>If we didn't have a class wrapper, it would not be possible to pass a Lua class
back to C++. Since the entry points of the virtual functions would still point
to the C++ base class, and not to the functions defined in Lua. That's why we
need one function that calls the base class' real function (used if the lua
class doesn't redefine it) and one virtual function that dispatches the call
into luabind, to allow it to select if a Lua function should be called, or if
the original function should be called. If you don't intend to derive from a
C++ class, or if it doesn't have any virtual member functions, you can register
it without a class wrapper.</p>
<p>You don't need to have a class wrapper in order to derive from a class, but if
it has virtual functions you may have silent errors.</p>
<!-- Unnecessary? The rule of thumb is:
If your class has virtual functions, create a wrapper type, if it doesn't
don't create a wrapper type. -->
<p>The wrappers must derive from <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">luabind::wrap_base</span></tt>, it contains a Lua reference
that will hold the Lua instance of the object to make it possible to dispatch
virtual function calls into Lua. This is done through an overloaded member function:</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
template<class Ret>
Ret call(char const* name, ...)
</pre>
<p>Its used in a similar way as <tt class="docutils literal">call_function</tt>, with the exception that it doesn't
take a <tt class="docutils literal">lua_State</tt> pointer, and the name is a member function in the Lua class.</p>
<div class="warning">
<p class="first admonition-title">Warning</p>
<p class="last">The current implementation of <tt class="docutils literal">call_member</tt> is not able to distinguish const
member functions from non-const. If you have a situation where you have an overloaded
virtual function where the only difference in their signatures is their constness, the
wrong overload will be called by <tt class="docutils literal">call_member</tt>. This is rarely the case though.</p>
</div>
<div class="section" id="object-identity">
<h3>12.1.1 Object identity</h3>
<p>When a pointer or reference to a registered class with a wrapper is passed
to Lua, luabind will query for it's dynamic type. If the dynamic type
inherits from <tt class="docutils literal">wrap_base</tt>, object identity is preserved.</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
struct A { .. };
struct A_wrap : A, wrap_base { .. };
A* f(A* ptr) { return ptr; }
module(L)
[
class_<A, A_wrap>("A"),
def("f", &f)
];
</pre>
<pre class="literal-block">
> class 'B' (A)
> x = B()
> assert(x == f(x)) -- object identity is preserved when object is
-- passed through C++
</pre>
<p>This functionality relies on RTTI being enabled (that <tt class="docutils literal">LUABIND_NO_RTTI</tt> is
not defined).</p>
</div>
</div>
<div class="section" id="overloading-operators">
<h2>12.2 Overloading operators</h2>
<p>You can overload most operators in Lua for your classes. You do this by simply
declaring a member function with the same name as an operator (the name of the
metamethods in Lua). The operators you can overload are:</p>
<blockquote>
<ul class="simple">
<li><tt class="docutils literal">__add</tt></li>
<li><tt class="docutils literal">__sub</tt></li>
<li><tt class="docutils literal">__mul</tt></li>
<li><tt class="docutils literal">__div</tt></li>
<li><tt class="docutils literal">__pow</tt></li>
<li><tt class="docutils literal">__lt</tt></li>
<li><tt class="docutils literal">__le</tt></li>
<li><tt class="docutils literal">__eq</tt></li>
<li><tt class="docutils literal">__call</tt></li>
<li><tt class="docutils literal">__unm</tt></li>
<li><tt class="docutils literal">__tostring</tt></li>
<li><tt class="docutils literal">__len</tt></li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
<p><tt class="docutils literal">__tostring</tt> isn't really an operator, but it's the metamethod that is called
by the standard library's <tt class="docutils literal">tostring()</tt> function. There's one strange behavior
regarding binary operators. You are not guaranteed that the self pointer you
get actually refers to an instance of your class. This is because Lua doesn't
distinguish the two cases where you get the other operand as left hand value or
right hand value. Consider the following examples:</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
class 'my_class'
function my_class:__init(v)
self.val = v
end
function my_class:__sub(v)
return my_class(self.val - v.val)
end
function my_class:__tostring()
return self.val
end
</pre>
<p>This will work well as long as you only subtracts instances of my_class with
each other. But If you want to be able to subtract ordinary numbers from your
class too, you have to manually check the type of both operands, including the
self object.</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
function my_class:__sub(v)
if (type(self) == 'number') then
return my_class(self - v.val)
elseif (type(v) == 'number') then
return my_class(self.val - v)
else
-- assume both operands are instances of my_class
return my_class(self.val - v.val)
end
end
</pre>
<p>The reason why <tt class="docutils literal">__sub</tt> is used as an example is because subtraction is not
commutative (the order of the operands matters). That's why luabind cannot
change order of the operands to make the self reference always refer to the
actual class instance.</p>
<p>If you have two different Lua classes with an overloaded operator, the operator
of the right hand side type will be called. If the other operand is a C++ class
with the same operator overloaded, it will be prioritized over the Lua class'
operator. If none of the C++ overloads matches, the Lua class operator will be
called.</p>
</div>
<div class="section" id="finalizers">
<h2>12.3 Finalizers</h2>
<p>If an object needs to perform actions when it's collected we provide a
<tt class="docutils literal">__finalize</tt> function that can be overridden in lua-classes. The
<tt class="docutils literal">__finalize</tt> functions will be called on all classes in the inheritance
chain, starting with the most derived type.</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
...
function lua_testclass:__finalize()
-- called when the an object is collected
end
</pre>
</div>
<div class="section" id="slicing">
<h2>12.4 Slicing</h2>
<p>If your lua C++ classes don't have wrappers (see <a class="reference internal" href="#deriving-in-lua">Deriving in lua</a>) and
you derive from them in lua, they may be sliced. Meaning, if an object
is passed into C++ as a pointer to its base class, the lua part will be
separated from the C++ base part. This means that if you call virtual
functions on that C++ object, they will not be dispatched to the lua
class. It also means that if you adopt the object, the lua part will be
garbage collected.</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
+--------------------+
| C++ object | <- ownership of this part is transferred
| | to c++ when adopted
+--------------------+
| lua class instance | <- this part is garbage collected when
| and lua members | instance is adopted, since it cannot
+--------------------+ be held by c++.
</pre>
<p>The problem can be illustrated by this example:</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
struct A {};
A* filter_a(A* a) { return a; }
void adopt_a(A* a) { delete a; }
</pre>
<pre class="literal-block">
using namespace luabind;
module(L)
[
class_<A>("A"),
def("filter_a", &filter_a),
def("adopt_a", &adopt_a, adopt(_1))
]
</pre>
<p>In lua:</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
a = A()
b = filter_a(a)
adopt_a(b)
</pre>
<p>In this example, lua cannot know that <tt class="docutils literal">b</tt> actually is the same object as
<tt class="docutils literal">a</tt>, and it will therefore consider the object to be owned by the C++ side.
When the <tt class="docutils literal">b</tt> pointer then is adopted, a runtime error will be raised because
an object not owned by lua is being adopted to C++.</p>
<p>If you have a wrapper for your class, none of this will happen, see
<a class="reference internal" href="#object-identity">Object identity</a>.</p>
</div>
</div>
<div class="section" id="exceptions">
<h1>13 Exceptions</h1>
<p>If any of the functions you register throws an exception when called, that
exception will be caught by luabind and converted to an error string and
<tt class="docutils literal">lua_error()</tt> will be invoked. If the exception is a <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">std::exception</span></tt> or a
<tt class="docutils literal">const char*</tt> the string that is pushed on the Lua stack, as error message,
will be the string returned by <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">std::exception::what()</span></tt> or the string itself
respectively. If the exception is unknown, a generic string saying that the
function threw an exception will be pushed.</p>
<p>If you have an exception type that isn't derived from
<tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">std::exception</span></tt>, or you wish to change the error message from the
default result of <tt class="docutils literal">what()</tt>, it is possible to register custom
exception handlers:</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
struct my_exception
{};
void translate_my_exception(lua_State* L, my_exception const&)
{
lua_pushstring(L, "my_exception");
}
…
luabind::register_exception_handler<my_exception>(&translate_my_exception);
</pre>
<p><tt class="docutils literal">translate_my_exception()</tt> will be called by luabind whenever a
<tt class="docutils literal">my_exception</tt> is caught. <tt class="docutils literal">lua_error()</tt> will be called after the
handler function returns, so it is expected that the function will push
an error string on the stack.</p>
<p>Any function that invokes Lua code may throw <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">luabind::error</span></tt>. This exception
means that a Lua run-time error occurred. The error message is found on top of
the Lua stack. The reason why the exception doesn't contain the error string
itself is because it would then require heap allocation which may fail. If an
exception class throws an exception while it is being thrown itself, the
application will be terminated.</p>
<p>Error's synopsis is:</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
class error : public std::exception
{
public:
error(lua_State*);
lua_State* state() const throw();
virtual const char* what() const throw();
};
</pre>
<p>The state function returns a pointer to the Lua state in which the error was
thrown. This pointer may be invalid if you catch this exception after the lua
state is destructed. If the Lua state is valid you can use it to retrieve the
error message from the top of the Lua stack.</p>
<p>An example of where the Lua state pointer may point to an invalid state
follows:</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
struct lua_state
{
lua_state(lua_State* L): m_L(L) {}
~lua_state() { lua_close(m_L); }
operator lua_State*() { return m_L; }
lua_State* m_L;
};
int main()
{
try
{
lua_state L = lua_open();
/* ... */
}
catch(luabind::error& e)
{
lua_State* L = e.state();
// L will now point to the destructed
// Lua state and be invalid
/* ... */
}
}
</pre>
<p>There's another exception that luabind may throw: <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">luabind::cast_failed</span></tt>,
this exception is thrown from <tt class="docutils literal">call_function<></tt> or <tt class="docutils literal">call_member<></tt>. It
means that the return value from the Lua function couldn't be converted to
a C++ value. It is also thrown from <tt class="docutils literal">object_cast<></tt> if the cast cannot
be made.</p>
<p>The synopsis for <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">luabind::cast_failed</span></tt> is:</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
class cast_failed : public std::exception
{
public:
cast_failed(lua_State*);
lua_State* state() const throw();
LUABIND_TYPE_INFO info() const throw();
virtual const char* what() const throw();
};
</pre>
<p>Again, the state member function returns a pointer to the Lua state where the
error occurred. See the example above to see where this pointer may be invalid.</p>
<p>The info member function returns the user defined <tt class="docutils literal">LUABIND_TYPE_INFO</tt>, which
defaults to a <tt class="docutils literal">const <span class="pre">std::type_info*</span></tt>. This type info describes the type that
we tried to cast a Lua value to.</p>
<p>If you have defined <tt class="docutils literal">LUABIND_NO_EXCEPTIONS</tt> none of these exceptions will be
thrown, instead you can set two callback functions that are called instead.
These two functions are only defined if <tt class="docutils literal">LUABIND_NO_EXCEPTIONS</tt> are defined.</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
luabind::set_error_callback(void(*)(lua_State*))
</pre>
<p>The function you set will be called when a runtime-error occur in Lua code. You
can find an error message on top of the Lua stack. This function is not
expected to return, if it does luabind will call <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">std::terminate()</span></tt>.</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
luabind::set_cast_failed_callback(void(*)(lua_State*, LUABIND_TYPE_INFO))
</pre>
<p>The function you set is called instead of throwing <tt class="docutils literal">cast_failed</tt>. This function
is not expected to return, if it does luabind will call <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">std::terminate()</span></tt>.</p>
</div>
<div class="section" id="policies">
<h1>14 Policies</h1>
<p>Sometimes it is necessary to control how luabind passes arguments and return
value, to do this we have policies. All policies use an index to associate
them with an argument in the function signature. These indices are <tt class="docutils literal">result</tt>
and <tt class="docutils literal">_N</tt> (where <tt class="docutils literal">N >= 1</tt>). When dealing with member functions <tt class="docutils literal">_1</tt> refers
to the <tt class="docutils literal">this</tt> pointer.</p>
<div class="contents local topic" id="policies-currently-implemented">
<p class="topic-title first">Policies currently implemented</p>
<ul class="auto-toc simple">
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#adopt" id="id106">14.1 adopt</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#dependency" id="id107">14.2 dependency</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#out-value" id="id108">14.3 out_value</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#pure-out-value" id="id109">14.4 pure_out_value</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#return-reference-to" id="id110">14.5 return_reference_to</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#copy" id="id111">14.6 copy</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#discard-result" id="id112">14.7 discard_result</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#return-stl-iterator" id="id113">14.8 return_stl_iterator</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#raw" id="id114">14.9 raw</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#yield" id="id115">14.10 yield</a></li>
</ul>
</div>
<div class="section" id="adopt">
<h2><a class="toc-backref" href="#id106">14.1 adopt</a></h2>
<div class="section" id="motivation">
<h3>14.1.1 Motivation</h3>
<p>Used to transfer ownership across language boundaries.</p>
</div>
<div class="section" id="defined-in">
<h3>14.1.2 Defined in</h3>
<pre class="literal-block">
#include <luabind/adopt_policy.hpp>
</pre>
</div>
<div class="section" id="synopsis">
<h3>14.1.3 Synopsis</h3>
<pre class="literal-block">
adopt(index)
</pre>
</div>
<div class="section" id="parameters">
<h3>14.1.4 Parameters</h3>
<table border="1" class="docutils">
<colgroup>
<col width="17%" />
<col width="83%" />
</colgroup>
<thead valign="bottom">
<tr><th class="head">Parameter</th>
<th class="head">Purpose</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody valign="top">
<tr><td><tt class="docutils literal">index</tt></td>
<td>The index which should transfer ownership, <tt class="docutils literal">_N</tt> or <tt class="docutils literal">result</tt></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
</div>
<div class="section" id="example">
<h3>14.1.5 Example</h3>
<pre class="literal-block">
X* create()
{
return new X;
}
...
module(L)
[
def("create", &create, <strong>adopt(result)</strong>)
];
</pre>
</div>
</div>
<div class="section" id="dependency">
<h2><a class="toc-backref" href="#id107">14.2 dependency</a></h2>
<div class="section" id="id4">
<h3>14.2.1 Motivation</h3>
<p>The dependency policy is used to create life-time dependencies between values.
This is needed for example when returning internal references to some class.</p>
</div>
<div class="section" id="id5">
<h3>14.2.2 Defined in</h3>
<pre class="literal-block">
#include <luabind/dependency_policy.hpp>
</pre>
</div>
<div class="section" id="id6">
<h3>14.2.3 Synopsis</h3>
<pre class="literal-block">
dependency(nurse_index, patient_index)
</pre>
</div>
<div class="section" id="id7">
<h3>14.2.4 Parameters</h3>
<table border="1" class="docutils">
<colgroup>
<col width="23%" />
<col width="77%" />
</colgroup>
<thead valign="bottom">
<tr><th class="head">Parameter</th>
<th class="head">Purpose</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody valign="top">
<tr><td><tt class="docutils literal">nurse_index</tt></td>
<td>The index which will keep the patient alive.</td>
</tr>
<tr><td><tt class="docutils literal">patient_index</tt></td>
<td>The index which will be kept alive.</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
</div>
<div class="section" id="id8">
<h3>14.2.5 Example</h3>
<pre class="literal-block">
struct X
{
B member;
B& get() { return member; }
};
module(L)
[
class_<X>("X")
.def("get", &X::get, <strong>dependency(result, _1)</strong>)
];
</pre>
</div>
</div>
<div class="section" id="out-value">
<h2><a class="toc-backref" href="#id108">14.3 out_value</a></h2>
<div class="section" id="id9">
<h3>14.3.1 Motivation</h3>
<p>This policy makes it possible to wrap functions that take non-const references
or pointer to non-const as it's parameters with the intention to write return
values to them. Since it's impossible to pass references to primitive types
in lua, this policy will add another return value with the value after the
call. If the function already has one return value, one instance of this
policy will add another return value (read about multiple return values in
the lua manual).</p>
</div>
<div class="section" id="id10">
<h3>14.3.2 Defined in</h3>
<pre class="literal-block">
#include <luabind/out_value_policy.hpp>
</pre>
</div>
<div class="section" id="id11">
<h3>14.3.3 Synopsis</h3>
<pre class="literal-block">
out_value(index, policies = none)
</pre>
</div>
<div class="section" id="id12">
<h3>14.3.4 Parameters</h3>
<table border="1" class="docutils">
<colgroup>
<col width="20%" />
<col width="80%" />
</colgroup>
<thead valign="bottom">
<tr><th class="head">Parameter</th>
<th class="head">Purpose</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody valign="top">
<tr><td><tt class="docutils literal">index</tt></td>
<td>The index of the parameter to be used as an out parameter.</td>
</tr>
<tr><td><tt class="docutils literal">policies</tt></td>
<td>The policies used internally to convert the out parameter
to/from Lua. <tt class="docutils literal">_1</tt> means <strong>to</strong> C++, <tt class="docutils literal">_2</tt> means <strong>from</strong>
C++.</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
</div>
<div class="section" id="id13">
<h3>14.3.5 Example</h3>
<pre class="literal-block">
void f1(float& val) { val = val + 10.f; }
void f2(float* val) { *val = *val + 10.f; }
module(L)
[
def("f", &f, <strong>out_value(_1)</strong>)
];
Lua 5.0 Copyright (C) 1994-2003 Tecgraf, PUC-Rio
> print(f1(10))
20
> print(f2(10))
20
</pre>
</div>
</div>
<div class="section" id="pure-out-value">
<h2><a class="toc-backref" href="#id109">14.4 pure_out_value</a></h2>
<div class="section" id="id14">
<h3>14.4.1 Motivation</h3>
<p>This works exactly like <tt class="docutils literal">out_value</tt>, except that it will pass a
default constructed object instead of converting an argument from
Lua. This means that the parameter will be removed from the lua
signature.</p>
</div>
<div class="section" id="id15">
<h3>14.4.2 Defined in</h3>
<pre class="literal-block">
#include <luabind/out_value_policy.hpp>
</pre>
</div>
<div class="section" id="id16">
<h3>14.4.3 Synopsis</h3>
<pre class="literal-block">
pure_out_value(index, policies = none)
</pre>
</div>
<div class="section" id="id17">
<h3>14.4.4 Parameters</h3>
<table border="1" class="docutils">
<colgroup>
<col width="20%" />
<col width="80%" />
</colgroup>
<thead valign="bottom">
<tr><th class="head">Parameter</th>
<th class="head">Purpose</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody valign="top">
<tr><td><tt class="docutils literal">index</tt></td>
<td>The index of the parameter to be used as an out parameter.</td>
</tr>
<tr><td><tt class="docutils literal">policies</tt></td>
<td>The policies used internally to convert the out parameter
to Lua. <tt class="docutils literal">_1</tt> is used as the internal index.</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
</div>
<div class="section" id="id18">
<h3>14.4.5 Example</h3>
<p>Note that no values are passed to the calls to <tt class="docutils literal">f1</tt> and <tt class="docutils literal">f2</tt>.</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
void f1(float& val) { val = 10.f; }
void f2(float* val) { *val = 10.f; }
module(L)
[
def("f", &f, <strong>pure_out_value(_1)</strong>)
];
Lua 5.0 Copyright (C) 1994-2003 Tecgraf, PUC-Rio
> print(f1())
10
> print(f2())
10
</pre>
</div>
</div>
<div class="section" id="return-reference-to">
<h2><a class="toc-backref" href="#id110">14.5 return_reference_to</a></h2>
<div class="section" id="id19">
<h3>14.5.1 Motivation</h3>
<p>It is very common to return references to arguments or the this-pointer to
allow for chaining in C++.</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
struct A
{
float val;
A& set(float v)
{
val = v;
return *this;
}
};
</pre>
<p>When luabind generates code for this, it will create a new object for the
return-value, pointing to the self-object. This isn't a problem, but could be a
bit inefficient. When using the return_reference_to-policy we have the ability
to tell luabind that the return-value is already on the lua stack.</p>
</div>
<div class="section" id="id20">
<h3>14.5.2 Defined in</h3>
<pre class="literal-block">
#include <luabind/return_reference_to_policy.hpp>
</pre>
</div>
<div class="section" id="id21">
<h3>14.5.3 Synopsis</h3>
<pre class="literal-block">
return_reference_to(index)
</pre>
</div>
<div class="section" id="id22">
<h3>14.5.4 Parameters</h3>
<table border="1" class="docutils">
<colgroup>
<col width="13%" />
<col width="87%" />
</colgroup>
<thead valign="bottom">
<tr><th class="head">Parameter</th>
<th class="head">Purpose</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody valign="top">
<tr><td><tt class="docutils literal">index</tt></td>
<td>The argument index to return a reference to, any argument but
not <tt class="docutils literal">result</tt>.</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
</div>
<div class="section" id="id23">
<h3>14.5.5 Example</h3>
<pre class="literal-block">
struct A
{
float val;
A& set(float v)
{
val = v;
return *this;
}
};
module(L)
[
class_<A>("A")
.def(constructor<>())
.def("set", &A::set, <strong>return_reference_to(_1)</strong>)
];
</pre>
<div class="warning">
<p class="first admonition-title">Warning</p>
<p class="last">This policy ignores all type information and should be used only it
situations where the parameter type is a perfect match to the
return-type (such as in the example).</p>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="section" id="copy">
<h2><a class="toc-backref" href="#id111">14.6 copy</a></h2>
<div class="section" id="id24">
<h3>14.6.1 Motivation</h3>
<p>This will make a copy of the parameter. This is the default behavior when
passing parameters by-value. Note that this can only be used when passing from
C++ to Lua. This policy requires that the parameter type has an accessible copy
constructor.</p>
</div>
<div class="section" id="id25">
<h3>14.6.2 Defined in</h3>
<pre class="literal-block">
#include <luabind/copy_policy.hpp>
</pre>
</div>
<div class="section" id="id26">
<h3>14.6.3 Synopsis</h3>
<pre class="literal-block">
copy(index)
</pre>
</div>
<div class="section" id="id27">
<h3>14.6.4 Parameters</h3>
<table border="1" class="docutils">
<colgroup>
<col width="17%" />
<col width="83%" />
</colgroup>
<thead valign="bottom">
<tr><th class="head">Parameter</th>
<th class="head">Purpose</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody valign="top">
<tr><td><tt class="docutils literal">index</tt></td>
<td>The index to copy. <tt class="docutils literal">result</tt> when used while wrapping C++
functions. <tt class="docutils literal">_N</tt> when passing arguments to Lua.</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
</div>
<div class="section" id="id28">
<h3>14.6.5 Example</h3>
<pre class="literal-block">
X* get()
{
static X instance;
return &instance;
}
...
module(L)
[
def("create", &create, <strong>copy(result)</strong>)
];
</pre>
</div>
</div>
<div class="section" id="discard-result">
<h2><a class="toc-backref" href="#id112">14.7 discard_result</a></h2>
<div class="section" id="id29">
<h3>14.7.1 Motivation</h3>
<p>This is a very simple policy which makes it possible to throw away
the value returned by a C++ function, instead of converting it to
Lua.</p>
</div>
<div class="section" id="id30">
<h3>14.7.2 Defined in</h3>
<pre class="literal-block">
#include <luabind/discard_result_policy.hpp>
</pre>
</div>
<div class="section" id="id31">
<h3>14.7.3 Synopsis</h3>
<pre class="literal-block">
discard_result
</pre>
</div>
<div class="section" id="id32">
<h3>14.7.4 Example</h3>
<pre class="literal-block">
struct X
{
X& set(T n)
{
...
return *this;
}
};
...
module(L)
[
class_<X>("X")
.def("set", &simple::set, <strong>discard_result</strong>)
];
</pre>
</div>
</div>
<div class="section" id="return-stl-iterator">
<h2><a class="toc-backref" href="#id113">14.8 return_stl_iterator</a></h2>
<div class="section" id="id33">
<h3>14.8.1 Motivation</h3>
<p>This policy converts an STL container to a generator function that can be used
in lua to iterate over the container. It works on any container that defines
<tt class="docutils literal">begin()</tt> and <tt class="docutils literal">end()</tt> member functions (they have to return iterators).</p>
</div>
<div class="section" id="id34">
<h3>14.8.2 Defined in</h3>
<pre class="literal-block">
#include <luabind/iterator_policy.hpp>
</pre>
</div>
<div class="section" id="id35">
<h3>14.8.3 Synopsis</h3>
<pre class="literal-block">
return_stl_iterator
</pre>
</div>
<div class="section" id="id36">
<h3>14.8.4 Example</h3>
<pre class="literal-block">
struct X
{
std::vector<std::string> names;
};
...
module(L)
[
class_<A>("A")
.def_readwrite("names", &X::names, <strong>return_stl_iterator</strong>)
];
...
> a = A()
> for name in a.names do
> print(name)
> end
</pre>
</div>
</div>
<div class="section" id="raw">
<h2><a class="toc-backref" href="#id114">14.9 raw</a></h2>
<div class="note">
<p class="first admonition-title">Note</p>
<p class="last"><tt class="docutils literal">raw()</tt> has been deprecated. <tt class="docutils literal">lua_State*</tt> parameters are
automatically handled by luabind.</p>
</div>
<div class="section" id="id37">
<h3>14.9.1 Motivation</h3>
<p>This converter policy will pass through the <tt class="docutils literal">lua_State*</tt> unmodified.
This can be useful for example when binding functions that need to
return a <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">luabind::object</span></tt>. The parameter will be removed from the
function signature, decreasing the function arity by one.</p>
</div>
<div class="section" id="id38">
<h3>14.9.2 Defined in</h3>
<pre class="literal-block">
#include <luabind/raw_policy.hpp>
</pre>
</div>
<div class="section" id="id39">
<h3>14.9.3 Synopsis</h3>
<pre class="literal-block">
raw(index)
</pre>
</div>
<div class="section" id="id40">
<h3>14.9.4 Parameters</h3>
<table border="1" class="docutils">
<colgroup>
<col width="17%" />
<col width="83%" />
</colgroup>
<thead valign="bottom">
<tr><th class="head">Parameter</th>
<th class="head">Purpose</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody valign="top">
<tr><td><tt class="docutils literal">index</tt></td>
<td>The index of the lua_State* parameter.</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
</div>
<div class="section" id="id41">
<h3>14.9.5 Example</h3>
<pre class="literal-block">
void greet(lua_State* L)
{
lua_pushstring(L, "hello");
}
...
module(L)
[
def("greet", &greet, <strong>raw(_1)</strong>)
];
> print(greet())
hello
</pre>
</div>
</div>
<div class="section" id="yield">
<h2><a class="toc-backref" href="#id115">14.10 yield</a></h2>
<div class="section" id="id42">
<h3>14.10.1 Motivation</h3>
<p>Makes a C++ function yield when returning.</p>
</div>
<div class="section" id="id43">
<h3>14.10.2 Defined in</h3>
<pre class="literal-block">
#include <luabind/yield_policy.hpp>
</pre>
</div>
<div class="section" id="id44">
<h3>14.10.3 Synopsis</h3>
<pre class="literal-block">
yield
</pre>
</div>
<div class="section" id="id45">
<h3>14.10.4 Example</h3>
<pre class="literal-block">
void do_thing_that_takes_time()
{
...
}
...
module(L)
[
def("do_thing_that_takes_time", &do_thing_that_takes_time, <strong>yield</strong>)
];
</pre>
<!-- old policies section
===================================================
Copy
- - - -
This will make a copy of the parameter. This is the default behavior when
passing parameters by-value. Note that this can only be used when passing from
C++ to Lua. This policy requires that the parameter type has a copy
constructor.
To use this policy you need to include ``luabind/copy_policy.hpp``.
Adopt
- - - - -
This will transfer ownership of the parameter.
Consider making a factory function in C++ and exposing it to lua::
base* create_base()
{
return new base();
}
...
module(L)
[
def("create_base", create_base)
];
Here we need to make sure Lua understands that it should adopt the pointer
returned by the factory-function. This can be done using the adopt-policy.
::
module(L)
[
def(L, "create_base", adopt(return_value))
];
To specify multiple policies we just separate them with '+'.
::
base* set_and_get_new(base* ptr)
{
base_ptrs.push_back(ptr);
return new base();
}
module(L)
[
def("set_and_get_new", &set_and_get_new,
adopt(return_value) + adopt(_1))
];
When Lua adopts a pointer, it will call delete on it. This means that it cannot
adopt pointers allocated with another allocator than new (no malloc for
example).
To use this policy you need to include ``luabind/adopt_policy.hpp``.
Dependency
- - - - - - - - - -
The dependency policy is used to create life-time dependencies between values.
Consider the following example::
struct A
{
B member;
const B& get_member()
{
return member;
}
};
When wrapping this class, we would do something like::
module(L)
[
class_<A>("A")
.def(constructor<>())
.def("get_member", &A::get_member)
];
However, since the return value of get_member is a reference to a member of A,
this will create some life-time issues. For example::
Lua 5.0 Copyright (C) 1994-2003 Tecgraf, PUC-Rio
a = A()
b = a:get_member() - - b points to a member of a
a = nil
collectgarbage(0) - - since there are no references left to a, it is
- - removed
- - at this point, b is pointing into a removed object
When using the dependency-policy, it is possible to tell luabind to tie the
lifetime of one object to another, like this::
module(L)
[
class_<A>("A")
.def(constructor<>())
.def("get_member", &A::get_member, dependency(result, _1))
];
This will create a dependency between the return-value of the function, and the
self-object. This means that the self-object will be kept alive as long as the
result is still alive. ::
Lua 5.0 Copyright (C) 1994-2003 Tecgraf, PUC-Rio
a = A()
b = a:get_member() - - b points to a member of a
a = nil
collectgarbage(0) - - a is dependent on b, so it isn't removed
b = nil
collectgarbage(0) - - all dependencies to a gone, a is removed
To use this policy you need to include ``luabind/dependency_policy.hpp``.
Return reference to
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
It is very common to return references to arguments or the this-pointer to
allow for chaining in C++.
::
struct A
{
float val;
A& set(float v)
{
val = v;
return *this;
}
};
When luabind generates code for this, it will create a new object for the
return-value, pointing to the self-object. This isn't a problem, but could be a
bit inefficient. When using the return_reference_to-policy we have the ability
to tell luabind that the return-value is already on the Lua stack.
::
module(L)
[
class_<A>("A")
.def(constructor<>())
.def("set", &A::set, return_reference_to(_1))
];
Instead of creating a new object, luabind will just copy the object that is
already on the stack.
.. warning::
This policy ignores all type information and should be used only it
situations where the parameter type is a perfect match to the
return-type (such as in the example).
To use this policy you need to include ``luabind/return_reference_to_policy.hpp``.
Out value
- - - - - - - - -
This policy makes it possible to wrap functions that take non const references
as its parameters with the intention to write return values to them.
::
void f(float& val) { val = val + 10.f; }
or
::
void f(float* val) { *val = *val + 10.f; }
Can be wrapped by doing::
module(L)
[
def("f", &f, out_value(_1))
];
When invoking this function from Lua it will return the value assigned to its
parameter.
::
Lua 5.0 Copyright (C) 1994-2003 Tecgraf, PUC-Rio
> a = f(10)
> print(a)
20
When this policy is used in conjunction with user define types we often need
to do ownership transfers.
::
struct A;
void f1(A*& obj) { obj = new A(); }
void f2(A** obj) { *obj = new A(); }
Here we need to make sure luabind takes control over object returned, for
this we use the adopt policy::
module(L)
[
class_<A>("A"),
def("f1", &f1, out_value(_1, adopt(_2)))
def("f2", &f2, out_value(_1, adopt(_2)))
];
Here we are using adopt as an internal policy to out_value. The index
specified, _2, means adopt will be used to convert the value back to Lua.
Using _1 means the policy will be used when converting from Lua to C++.
To use this policy you need to include ``luabind/out_value_policy.hpp``.
Pure out value
- - - - - - - - - - - - - -
This policy works in exactly the same way as out_value, except that it
replaces the parameters with default-constructed objects.
::
void get(float& x, float& y)
{
x = 3.f;
y = 4.f;
}
...
module(L)
[
def("get", &get,
pure_out_value(_1) + pure_out_value(_2))
];
::
Lua 5.0 Copyright (C) 1994-2003 Tecgraf, PUC-Rio
> x, y = get()
> print(x, y)
3 5
Like out_value, it is possible to specify an internal policy used then
converting the values back to Lua.
::
void get(test_class*& obj)
{
obj = new test_class();
}
...
module(L)
[
def("get", &get, pure_out_value(_1, adopt(_1)))
];
Discard result
- - - - - - - - - - - - - -
This is a very simple policy which makes it possible to throw away
the value returned by a C++ function, instead of converting it to
Lua. This example makes sure the this reference never gets converted
to Lua.
::
struct simple
{
simple& set_name(const std::string& n)
{
name = n;
return *this;
}
std::string name;
};
...
module(L)
[
class_<simple>("simple")
.def("set_name", &simple::set_name, discard_result)
];
To use this policy you need to include ``luabind/discard_result_policy.hpp``.
Return STL iterator
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
This policy converts an STL container to a generator function that can be used
in Lua to iterate over the container. It works on any container that defines
``begin()`` and ``end()`` member functions (they have to return iterators). It
can be used like this::
struct A
{
std::vector<std::string> names;
};
module(L)
[
class_<A>("A")
.def_readwrite("names", &A::names, return_stl_iterator)
];
The Lua code to iterate over the container::
a = A()
for name in a.names do
print(name)
end
To use this policy you need to include ``luabind/iterator_policy.hpp``.
Yield
- - - - -
This policy will cause the function to always yield the current thread when
returning. See the Lua manual for restrictions on yield. -->
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="section" id="splitting-up-the-registration">
<h1>15 Splitting up the registration</h1>
<p>It is possible to split up a module registration into several
translation units without making each registration dependent
on the module it's being registered in.</p>
<p><tt class="docutils literal">a.cpp</tt>:</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
luabind::scope register_a()
{
return
class_<a>("a")
.def("f", &a::f)
;
}
</pre>
<p><tt class="docutils literal">b.cpp</tt>:</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
luabind::scope register_b()
{
return
class_<b>("b")
.def("g", &b::g)
;
}
</pre>
<p><tt class="docutils literal">module_ab.cpp</tt>:</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
luabind::scope register_a();
luabind::scope register_b();
void register_module(lua_State* L)
{
module("b", L)
[
register_a(),
register_b()
];
}
</pre>
</div>
<div class="section" id="error-handling">
<h1>16 Error Handling</h1>
<div class="section" id="pcall-errorfunc">
<h2>16.1 pcall errorfunc</h2>
<p>As mentioned in the <a class="reference external" href="http://www.lua.org/manual/5.0/manual.html">Lua documentation</a>, it is possible to pass an
error handler function to <tt class="docutils literal">lua_pcall()</tt>. Luabind makes use of
<tt class="docutils literal">lua_pcall()</tt> internally when calling member functions and free functions.
It is possible to set the error handler function that Luabind will use
globally:</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
typedef int(*pcall_callback_fun)(lua_State*);
void set_pcall_callback(pcall_callback_fun fn);
</pre>
<p>This is primarily useful for adding more information to the error message
returned by a failed protected call. For more information on how to use the
pcall_callback function, see <tt class="docutils literal">errfunc</tt> under the
<a class="reference external" href="http://www.lua.org/manual/5.0/manual.html#3.15">pcall section of the lua manual</a>.</p>
<p>For more information on how to retrieve debugging information from lua, see
<a class="reference external" href="http://www.lua.org/manual/5.0/manual.html#4">the debug section of the lua manual</a>.</p>
<p>The message returned by the <tt class="docutils literal">pcall_callback</tt> is accessable as the top lua
value on the stack. For example, if you would like to access it as a luabind
object, you could do like this:</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
catch(error& e)
{
object error_msg(from_stack(e.state(), -1));
std::cout << error_msg << std::endl;
}
</pre>
</div>
<div class="section" id="file-and-line-numbers">
<h2>16.2 file and line numbers</h2>
<p>If you want to add file name and line number to the error messages generated
by luabind you can define your own <a class="reference internal" href="#pcall-errorfunc">pcall errorfunc</a>. You may want to modify
this callback to better suit your needs, but the basic functionality could be
implemented like this:</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
int add_file_and_line(lua_State* L)
{
lua_Debug d;
lua_getstack(L, 1, &d);
lua_getinfo(L, "Sln", &d);
std::string err = lua_tostring(L, -1);
lua_pop(L, 1);
std::stringstream msg;
msg << d.short_src << ":" << d.currentline;
if (d.name != 0)
{
msg << "(" << d.namewhat << " " << d.name << ")";
}
msg << " " << err;
lua_pushstring(L, msg.str().c_str());
return 1;
}
</pre>
<p>For more information about what kind of information you can add to the error
message, see <a class="reference external" href="http://www.lua.org/manual/5.0/manual.html#4">the debug section of the lua manual</a>.</p>
<p>Note that the callback set by <tt class="docutils literal">set_pcall_callback()</tt> will only be used when
luabind executes lua code. Anytime when you call <tt class="docutils literal">lua_pcall</tt> yourself, you
have to supply your function if you want error messages translated.</p>
</div>
<div class="section" id="lua-panic">
<h2>16.3 lua panic</h2>
<p>When lua encounters a fatal error caused by a bug from the C/C++ side, it will
call its internal panic function. This can happen, for example, when you call
<tt class="docutils literal">lua_gettable</tt> on a value that isn't a table. If you do the same thing from
within lua, it will of course just fail with an error message.</p>
<p>The default panic function will <tt class="docutils literal">exit()</tt> the application. If you want to
handle this case without terminating your application, you can define your own
panic function using <tt class="docutils literal">lua_atpanic</tt>. The best way to continue from the panic
function is to make sure lua is compiled as C++ and throw an exception from
the panic function. Throwing an exception instead of using <tt class="docutils literal">setjmp</tt> and
<tt class="docutils literal">longjmp</tt> will make sure the stack is correctly unwound.</p>
<p>When the panic function is called, the lua state is invalid, and the only
allowed operation on it is to close it.</p>
<p>For more information, see the <a class="reference external" href="http://www.lua.org/manual/5.0/manual.html#3.19">lua manual section 3.19</a>.</p>
</div>
<div class="section" id="structured-exceptions-msvc">
<h2>16.4 structured exceptions (MSVC)</h2>
<p>Since lua is generally built as a C library, any callbacks called from lua
cannot under any circumstance throw an exception. Because of that, luabind has
to catch all exceptions and translate them into proper lua errors (by calling
<tt class="docutils literal">lua_error()</tt>). This means we have a <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">catch(...)</span> {}</tt> in there.</p>
<p>In Visual Studio, <tt class="docutils literal">catch <span class="pre">(...)</span></tt> will not only catch C++ exceptions, it will
also catch structured exceptions, such as segmentation fault. This means that if
your function, that gets called from luabind, makes an invalid memory
adressing, you won't notice it. All that will happen is that lua will return
an error message saying "unknown exception".</p>
<p>To remedy this, you can create your own <em>exception translator</em>:</p>
<pre class="literal-block">
void straight_to_debugger(unsigned int, _EXCEPTION_POINTERS*)
{ throw; }
#ifdef _MSC_VER
::_set_se_translator(straight_to_debugger);
#endif
</pre>
<p>This will make structured exceptions, like segmentation fault, to actually get
caught by the debugger.</p>
</div>
<div class="section" id="error-messages">
<h2>16.5 Error messages</h2>
<p>These are the error messages that can be generated by luabind, with a more
in-depth explanation.</p>
<ul>
<li><pre class="first literal-block">
the attribute '<em>class-name.attribute-name</em>' is read only
</pre>
<p>There is no data member named <em>attribute-name</em> in the class <em>class-name</em>,
or there's no setter-function registered on that property name. See the
<a class="reference internal" href="#properties">Properties</a> section.</p>
</li>
<li><pre class="first literal-block">
the attribute '<em>class-name.attribute-name</em>' is of type: (<em>class-name</em>) and does not match (<em>class_name</em>)
</pre>
<p>This error is generated if you try to assign an attribute with a value
of a type that cannot be converted to the attributes type.</p>
</li>
<li><pre class="first literal-block">
<em>class-name()</em> threw an exception, <em>class-name:function-name()</em> threw an exception
</pre>
<p>The class' constructor or member function threw an unknown exception.
Known exceptions are const char*, std::exception. See the
<a class="reference internal" href="#exceptions">exceptions</a> section.</p>
</li>
<li><pre class="first literal-block">
no overload of '<em>class-name:function-name</em>' matched the arguments (<em>parameter-types</em>)
no match for function call '<em>function-name</em>' with the parameters (<em>parameter-types</em>)
no constructor of <em>class-name</em> matched the arguments (<em>parameter-types</em>)
no operator <em>operator-name</em> matched the arguments (<em>parameter-types</em>)
</pre>
<p>No function/operator with the given name takes the parameters you gave
it. You have either misspelled the function name, or given it incorrect
parameters. This error is followed by a list of possible candidate
functions to help you figure out what parameter has the wrong type. If
the candidate list is empty there's no function at all with that name.
See the signature matching section.</p>
</li>
<li><pre class="first literal-block">
call of overloaded '<em>class-name:function-name*(*parameter-types</em>)' is ambiguous
ambiguous match for function call '<em>function-name</em>' with the parameters (<em>parameter-types</em>)
call of overloaded constructor '<em>class-name*(*parameter-types</em>)' is ambiguous
call of overloaded operator <em>operator-name</em> (<em>parameter-types</em>) is ambiguous
</pre>
<p>This means that the function/operator you are trying to call has at least
one other overload that matches the arguments just as good as the first
overload.</p>
</li>
<li><pre class="first literal-block">
cannot derive from C++ class '<em>class-name</em>'. It does not have a wrapped type.
</pre>
</li>
</ul>
</div>
</div>
<div class="section" id="build-options">
<h1>17 Build options</h1>
<p>There are a number of configuration options available when building luabind.
It is very important that your project has the exact same configuration
options as the ones given when the library was build! The exceptions are the
<tt class="docutils literal">LUABIND_MAX_ARITY</tt> and <tt class="docutils literal">LUABIND_MAX_BASES</tt> which are template-based
options and only matters when you use the library (which means they can
differ from the settings of the library).</p>
<p>The default settings which will be used if no other settings are given
can be found in <tt class="docutils literal">luabind/config.hpp</tt>.</p>
<p>If you want to change the settings of the library, you can modify the
config file. It is included and used by all makefiles. You can change paths
to Lua and boost in there as well.</p>
<dl class="docutils">
<dt>LUABIND_MAX_ARITY</dt>
<dd>Controls the maximum arity of functions that are registered with luabind.
You can't register functions that takes more parameters than the number
this macro is set to. It defaults to 5, so, if your functions have greater
arity you have to redefine it. A high limit will increase compilation time.</dd>
<dt>LUABIND_MAX_BASES</dt>
<dd>Controls the maximum number of classes one class can derive from in
luabind (the number of classes specified within <tt class="docutils literal">bases<></tt>).
<tt class="docutils literal">LUABIND_MAX_BASES</tt> defaults to 4. A high limit will increase
compilation time.</dd>
<dt>LUABIND_NO_ERROR_CHECKING</dt>
<dd><p class="first">If this macro is defined, all the Lua code is expected only to make legal
calls. If illegal function calls are made (e.g. giving parameters that
doesn't match the function signature) they will not be detected by luabind
and the application will probably crash. Error checking could be disabled
when shipping a release build (given that no end-user has access to write
custom Lua code). Note that function parameter matching will be done if a
function is overloaded, since otherwise it's impossible to know which one
was called. Functions will still be able to throw exceptions when error
checking is disabled.</p>
<p class="last">If a function throws an exception it will be caught by luabind and
propagated with <tt class="docutils literal">lua_error()</tt>.</p>
</dd>
<dt>LUABIND_NO_EXCEPTIONS</dt>
<dd><p class="first">This define will disable all usage of try, catch and throw in luabind.
This will in many cases disable run-time errors, when performing invalid
casts or calling Lua functions that fails or returns values that cannot
be converted by the given policy. luabind requires that no function called
directly or indirectly by luabind throws an exception (throwing exceptions
through Lua has undefined behavior).</p>
<p class="last">Where exceptions are the only way to get an error report from luabind,
they will be replaced with calls to the callback functions set with
<tt class="docutils literal">set_error_callback()</tt> and <tt class="docutils literal">set_cast_failed_callback()</tt>.</p>
</dd>
<dt>LUA_API</dt>
<dd>If you want to link dynamically against Lua, you can set this define to
the import-keyword on your compiler and platform. On Windows in Visual Studio
this should be <tt class="docutils literal">__declspec(dllimport)</tt> if you want to link against Lua
as a dll.</dd>
<dt>LUABIND_DYNAMIC_LINK</dt>
<dd>Must be defined if you intend to link against the luabind shared
library.</dd>
<dt>LUABIND_NO_RTTI</dt>
<dd>You can define this if you don't want luabind to use <tt class="docutils literal">dynamic_cast<></tt>.
It will disable <a class="reference internal" href="#object-identity">Object identity</a>.</dd>
<dt>NDEBUG</dt>
<dd>This define will disable all asserts and should be defined in a release
build.</dd>
</dl>
</div>
<div class="section" id="implementation-notes">
<h1>18 Implementation notes</h1>
<p>The classes and objects are implemented as user data in Lua. To make sure that
the user data really is the internal structure it is supposed to be, we tag
their metatables. A user data who's metatable contains a boolean member named
<tt class="docutils literal">__luabind_classrep</tt> is expected to be a class exported by luabind. A user
data who's metatable contains a boolean member named <tt class="docutils literal">__luabind_class</tt> is
expected to be an instantiation of a luabind class.</p>
<p>This means that if you make your own user data and tags its metatable with the
exact same names, you can very easily fool luabind and crash the application.</p>
<p>In the Lua registry, luabind keeps an entry called <tt class="docutils literal">__luabind_classes</tt>. It
should not be removed or overwritten.</p>
<p>In the global table, a variable called <tt class="docutils literal">super</tt> is used every time a
constructor in a lua-class is called. This is to make it easy for that
constructor to call its base class' constructor. So, if you have a global
variable named super it may be overwritten. This is probably not the best
solution, and this restriction may be removed in the future.</p>
<div class="note">
<p class="first admonition-title">Note</p>
<p>Deprecated</p>
<p><tt class="docutils literal">super()</tt> has been deprecated since version 0.8 in favor of directly
invoking the base class' <tt class="docutils literal">__init()</tt> function:</p>
<pre class="last literal-block">
function Derived:__init()
Base.__init(self)
end
</pre>
</div>
<p>Luabind uses two upvalues for functions that it registers. The first is a
userdata containing a list of overloads for the function, the other is a light
userdata with the value 0x1337, this last value is used to identify functions
registered by luabind. It should be virtually impossible to have such a pointer
as secondary upvalue by pure chance. This means, if you are trying to replace
an existing function with a luabind function, luabind will see that the
secondary upvalue isn't the magic id number and replace it. If it can identify
the function to be a luabind function, it won't replace it, but rather add
another overload to it.</p>
<p>Inside the luabind namespace, there's another namespace called detail. This
namespace contains non-public classes and are not supposed to be used directly.</p>
</div>
<div class="section" id="faq">
<h1>19 FAQ</h1>
<dl class="docutils">
<dt>What's up with __cdecl and __stdcall?</dt>
<dd>If you're having problem with functions
that cannot be converted from <tt class="docutils literal">void (__stdcall <span class="pre">*)(int,int)</span></tt> to
<tt class="docutils literal">void <span class="pre">(__cdecl*)(int,int)</span></tt>. You can change the project settings to make the
compiler generate functions with __cdecl calling conventions. This is
a problem in developer studio.</dd>
<dt>What's wrong with functions taking variable number of arguments?</dt>
<dd>You cannot register a function with ellipses in its signature. Since
ellipses don't preserve type safety, those should be avoided anyway.</dd>
<dt>Internal structure overflow in VC</dt>
<dd>If you, in visual studio, get fatal error C1204: compiler limit :
internal structure overflow. You should try to split that compilation
unit up in smaller ones. See <a class="reference internal" href="#splitting-up-the-registration">Splitting up the registration</a> and
<a class="reference internal" href="#splitting-class-registrations">Splitting class registrations</a>.</dd>
<dt>What's wrong with precompiled headers in VC?</dt>
<dd>Visual Studio doesn't like anonymous namespaces in its precompiled
headers. If you encounter this problem you can disable precompiled
headers for the compilation unit (cpp-file) that uses luabind.</dd>
<dt>error C1076: compiler limit - internal heap limit reached in VC</dt>
<dd>In visual studio you will probably hit this error. To fix it you have to
increase the internal heap with a command-line option. We managed to
compile the test suit with /Zm300, but you may need a larger heap then
that.</dd>
<dt>error C1055: compiler limit : out of keys in VC</dt>
<dd>It seems that this error occurs when too many assert() are used in a
program, or more specifically, the __LINE__ macro. It seems to be fixed by
changing /ZI (Program database for edit and continue) to /Zi
(Program database).</dd>
<dt>How come my executable is huge?</dt>
<dd><p class="first">If you're compiling in debug mode, you will probably have a lot of
debug-info and symbols (luabind consists of a lot of functions). Also,
if built in debug mode, no optimizations were applied, luabind relies on
that the compiler is able to inline functions. If you built in release
mode, try running strip on your executable to remove export-symbols,
this will trim down the size.</p>
<p class="last">Our tests suggests that cygwin's gcc produces much bigger executables
compared to gcc on other platforms and other compilers.</p>
</dd>
</dl>
<!-- HUH?! // check the magic number that identifies luabind's functions -->
<dl class="docutils">
<dt>Can I register class templates with luabind?</dt>
<dd><p class="first">Yes you can, but you can only register explicit instantiations of the
class. Because there's no Lua counterpart to C++ templates. For example,
you can register an explicit instantiation of std::vector<> like this:</p>
<pre class="last literal-block">
module(L)
[
class_<std::vector<int> >("vector")
.def(constructor<int>)
.def("push_back", &std::vector<int>::push_back)
];
</pre>
</dd>
</dl>
<!-- Again, irrelevant to docs: Note that the space between the two > is required by C++. -->
<dl class="docutils">
<dt>Do I have to register destructors for my classes?</dt>
<dd><p class="first">No, the destructor of a class is always called by luabind when an
object is collected. Note that Lua has to own the object to collect it.
If you pass it to C++ and gives up ownership (with adopt policy) it will
no longer be owned by Lua, and not collected.</p>
<p class="last">If you have a class hierarchy, you should make the destructor virtual if
you want to be sure that the correct destructor is called (this apply to C++
in general).</p>
</dd>
</dl>
<!-- And again, the above is irrelevant to docs. This isn't a general C++ FAQ. But it saves us support questions. -->
<dl class="docutils">
<dt>Fatal Error C1063 compiler limit : compiler stack overflow in VC</dt>
<dd>VC6.5 chokes on warnings, if you are getting alot of warnings from your
code try suppressing them with a pragma directive, this should solve the
problem.</dd>
<dt>Crashes when linking against luabind as a dll in Windows</dt>
<dd>When you build luabind, Lua and you project, make sure you link against
the runtime dynamically (as a dll).</dd>
<dt>I cannot register a function with a non-const parameter</dt>
<dd>This is because there is no way to get a reference to a Lua value. Have
a look at <a class="reference internal" href="#out-value">out_value</a> and <a class="reference internal" href="#pure-out-value">pure_out_value</a> policies.</dd>
</dl>
</div>
<div class="section" id="known-issues">
<h1>20 Known issues</h1>
<ul class="simple">
<li>You cannot use strings with extra nulls in them as member names that refers
to C++ members.</li>
<li>If one class registers two functions with the same name and the same
signature, there's currently no error. The last registered function will
be the one that's used.</li>
<li>In VC7, classes can not be called test.</li>
<li>If you register a function and later rename it, error messages will use the
original function name.</li>
<li>luabind does not support class hierarchies with virtual inheritance. Casts are
done with static pointer offsets.</li>
</ul>
</div>
<div class="section" id="acknowledgments">
<h1>21 Acknowledgments</h1>
<p>Written by Daniel Wallin and Arvid Norberg. © Copyright 2003.
All rights reserved.</p>
<p>Evan Wies has contributed with thorough testing, countless bug reports
and feature ideas.</p>
<p>This library was highly inspired by Dave Abrahams' <a class="reference external" href="http://www.boost.org/libraries/python">Boost.Python</a> library.</p>
</div>
</div>
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