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

How to Call C++ from Lua

In the previous three chapters, we focused on learning how to call Lua from C++. In this chapter, we will start to learn how to call C++ from Lua. This is important for your applications because although Lua scripts can extend your C++ applications, they can also benefit from the functions provided by your native C++ code.

This also means we will learn more concepts and piece different things together to make it work. Although the chapters are laid out in a way that they extend the previous chapter in a seamless flow, you may need a different pace to absorb the new concepts. Do read the sections more times if you need practice with coding.

We will cover the following topics:

  • How to register C++ functions
  • How to override Lua library functions
  • How to register C++ modules