Book Image

Integrate Lua with C++

By : Wenhuan Li
Book Image

Integrate Lua with C++

By: Wenhuan Li

Overview of this book

C++ is a popular choice in the developer community for building complex and large-scale performant applications and systems. Often a need arises to extend the system at runtime, without recompiling the whole C++ program. Using a scripting language like Lua can help achieve this goal efficiently. Integrate Lua to C++ is a comprehensive guide to integrating Lua to C++ and will enable you to achieve the goal of extending C++ programs at runtime. You’ll learn, in sequence, how to get and compile the Lua library, the Lua programming language, calling Lua code from C++, and calling C++ code from Lua. In each topic, you’ll practice with code examples, and learn the in-depth mechanisms for smooth working. Throughout the book, the latter examples build on the earlier ones while also acting as a standalone. You’ll learn to implement Lua executor and Lua binding generator, which you can use in your projects directly with further customizations. By the end of this book, you’ll have mastered integrating Lua into C++ and using Lua in your C++ project efficiently, gained the skills to extend your applications at runtime, and achieved dynamic and adaptable C++ development.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
Free Chapter
1
Part 1 – Lua Basics
4
Part 2 – Calling Lua from C++
8
Part 3 – Calling C++ from Lua
12
Part 4 – Advanced Topics

Exercises

  1. Implement LuaType::function and LuaFunction to cover the Lua function type. Do not worry about the value field in LuaFunction. You can use nullptr. To test it, you need to call a Lua function that returns another function, and in C++, print out that the return value is a function.
  2. Implement LuaType::table and LuaTable to cover the Lua table type. Follow the same instructions as for the previous question.
  3. In the last chapter, we implemented getGlobalString and setGlobal to work with Lua global values. Rewrite those two methods to support more types. You can use the new names getGlobal and setGlobal, and use LuaValue.
  4. Implement a private dumpStack debug function. This function will dump the current Lua stack. You only need to support the currently supported types in LuaValue. Insert a call to this function in different places in LuaExecutor. This will deepen your understanding of the Lua stack.