Introduction

Luabind is a small header only library aiming to provide easy means to expose C++ functionality in Lua. Currently it supports inheritance, binding of class member functions, static functions, member variables and global functions.

It uses variadic template magic to generate code for you, which handles function arguments transition from Lua to C++, function call, and transition result back to Lua.

Example

class Account : public luabind::Object {
public:
    Account(int balance);
public:
    void credit(int amount);
    void debit(int amount);

public: // public for demonstative purposes
    int balance;
};

class SpecialAccount : public Account {
public:
    SpecialAccount(int balance, int overdraft);

    int getOverdraft() const;

private:
    int overdraft;
};

Binding to lua

lua_State* L = luaL_newstate();
luaL_openlibs(L);
luabind::class_<Account>(L, "Account")
    .constructor<int>("new")
    .function<&Account::credit>("credit")
    .function<&Account::debit>("debit")
    .property_readonly<&Account::balance>("balance");

luabind::class_<SpecialAccount, Account>(L, "SpecialAccount")
    .constructor<int, int>("new")
    .construct_shared<int, int>("create")
    .property_readonly<&SpecialAccount::getOverdraft>("overdraft");

luaL_dostring(L, R"--(
    a = Account:new(10)
    a:credit(3)
    a:debit(2)
    s = SpecialAccount:new(50, 10) " Memory is allocated on lua stack.
    s:credit(20)
    s = SpecialAccount:create(50, 10) " Represented by C++ shared_ptr on lua stack.
    s:credit(20)
)--");

How to install, configure, build and run

Ordinary prcedure when developing and testing luabind library.

git clone https://github.com/PicsArt/luabind.git

git submodule update --recursive --init

cmake --preset luabind

cmake --build --preset luabind

ctest --preset unit_tests

Integrate to CMake project

Simple example to use luabind as a submodule to a project which already has Lua integrated.

# Given that "lua" is the cmake name of Lua library in the top project
# And it has lua's path added to include path, such as:
# target_include_directories(lua SYSTEM INTERFACE ${LUA_SOURCE_DIR})
set(LUABIND_LUA_LIB_NAME lua)
add_subdirectory(luabind)

Here are some control variables, which will help to fine tune integration:

CMake variable	Description
LUABIND_LUA_LIB_NAME (STRING)	cmake name of the Lua library to use (default: luabind_lua)
LUABIND_LUA_CPP (BOOL)	option indicating whether Lua headers should be included as C++ code. (default: OFF)
LUABIND_TESTS (BOOL)	option to enable luabind tests (default: OFF)