LuaBind Introduction

Lua is a great scripting language for games and regular applications alike because it is fast, simple and well suited for embedding (embedding means putting the scripting language into your application instead of making your application an add-on module to the scripting language). Lua can easily be compiled and setting up a lua environment in your code is no big task either, because all you have to do is call luaL_newstate() and later lua_close().

However, when the time comes to create bindings for your functions and classes so scripts can call into your code, things quickly become harder. You’re forced to learn the semantics of the lua stack, what effects various functions of the lua API have on it, how lua treats user data and finally, you’ll have to repeat the tedious work of writing lua wrappers for your functions and classes again and again. LuaBind solves this problem nicely by automatically generating the wrapper code for any function or class you hand to LuaBind. Contrary to other lua wrapper generators, LuaBind works entirely in C++ and does not require any kind of special preprocessor.

Once LuaBind is set up and working, using Lua becomes as fun and easy as you always wanted it to be. This article will help you to reach that point and then shows you how to use it to call C/C++ functions from Lua, to call Lua functions from C++ and even to export entire C++ classes.

Getting your Hands on LuaBind Binaries

To use LuaBind, you have two options: Add all LuaBind sources to your project, or compile LuaBind into a static library which you can then link to your project. This article will follow the latter approach, because it is cleaner and you can more easily upgrade your projects to new versions of LuaBind.

To compile LuaBind, you would normally download the sources of Lua, Boost and LuaBind, set up and compile each library as well as possibly modify LuaBind due to changes in the Boost library which have not been reflected in LuaBind yet. Because this whole process can be somewhat troublesome, you can also download a single package containing precompiled binaries here:

Download

Demonstration project with LuaBind binaries that compiles out-of-the-box in either Microsoft Visual C++ Express 2010 SP1 or one of the bigger Visual Studio editions.
Nuclex.LuaBind.Demo-0.9.1.7z ^{(6.0 MiB)}

Precompiled libraries and headers can be found in the Directory Icon References directory in case you want to use them in another project:

References
- Lua (5.2.0)
- LuaBind (0.9.1)
- Boost (1.47.0, minimal subset)

Calling Lua Functions from C++

It doesn’t get any easier than this. To call a function in a lua script from C++, you can use LuaBind’s call_function() template function like this:

int main() {
  // Create a new lua state
  lua_State *myLuaState = luaL_newstate();
 
  // Connect LuaBind to this lua state
  luabind::open(myLuaState);
 
  // Define a lua function that we can call
  luaL_dostring(
    myLuaState,
    "function add(first, second)\n"
    "  return first + second\n"
    "end\n"
  );
 
  cout << "Result: "
       << luabind::call_function<int>(myLuaState, "add", 2, 3)
       << endl;
 
  lua_close(myLuaState);
}

Let’s see, first we use luabind::open() to connect the lua state to LuaBind. This has to be done for all lua states where we want to use LuaBind. Next, we execute some lua code so the lua state contains a global function named add(), which is then called in the cout line using luabind::call_function(). This template function requires the type of the return value to be passed in as a template parameter. Its first argument is the lua state that contains the lua function we’d like to call. The next argument denotes the name of that function and after that we can list any arguments that we want to pass to the lua function. The types of these additional arguments can be identified without our help because of the way templates work in C++.

Making C++ functions callable from Lua

The next example is a bit more complicated. We want to call a C++ function from a lua script. Instead of wasting our time with lua stack manipulation and data type conversion, we can simply do this:

void print_hello(int number) {
  cout << "hello world " << number << endl;
}
 
int main() {
  // Create a new lua state
  lua_State *myLuaState = luaL_newstate();
 
  // Connect LuaBind to this lua state
  luabind::open(myLuaState);
 
  // Add our function to the state's global scope
  luabind::module(myLuaState) [
    luabind::def("print_hello", print_hello)
  ];
 
  // Now call our function in a lua script
  luaL_dostring(
    myLuaState,
    "print_hello(123)\n"
  );
 
  lua_close(myLuaState);
}

As before, we need to connect LuaBind to the lua state by using luabind::open(). The luabind::module() part is required to tell LuaBind what scope we want to add our function to. Finally, using luabind::def() we can export a C/C++ function to the lua state. The first argument is the name as it will be seen in lua scripts, the second is the C/C++ function we want to export.

If you need to export multiple functions, you should seperate them from each other using commas (,). You’re not allowed to just end each definition with a semicolon because they’re still enclosed by the luabind::module statement.

Exporting Classes to Lua

Now onto the fun part. LuaBind allows you to export entire C++ classes to lua, including constructors with arguments, overloaded functions and even operators. It is just as well possible to use a lua class from within C++ through LuaBind. But let’s start with something simple:

class NumberPrinter {
  public:
    NumberPrinter(int number) :
      m_number(number) {}
 
    void print() {
      cout << m_number << endl;
    }
 
  private:
    int m_number;
};
 
int main() {
  // Create a new lua state
  lua_State *myLuaState = luaL_newstate();
 
  // Connect LuaBind to this lua state
  luabind::open(myLuaState);
 
  // Export our class with LuaBind
  luabind::module(myLuaState) [
    luabind::class_<NumberPrinter>("NumberPrinter")
      .def(luabind::constructor<int>())
      .def("print", &NumberPrinter::print)
  ];
 
  // Now use this class in a lua script
  luaL_dostring(
    myLuaState,
    "Print2000 = NumberPrinter(2000)\n"
    "Print2000:print()\n"
  );
 
  lua_close(myLuaState);
}

This might look difficult, but once you’ve got the idea, exporting other classes will be a no-brainer. The first thing to notice is luabind::class_, which is a template struct used to export classes to lua. The template argument we’re specifying is, of course, the class that we wish to export. Its normal constructor argument defines the name under which the class will be known in lua scripts. You’re actually creating a temporary, unnamed instance of a luabind::class_<NumberPrinter> on which methods can be called.

The methods we’re calling can be seen in the next two lines where the class constructor is exported (using a special auxiliary structure luabind::constructor) as well as the print method used to display the number. Notice that unlike exported functions, class methods are not seperated by commas, but as before mustn’t be terminated by a semicolon.

Exporting class attributes and properties

LuaBind can also export a class’ attributes (variables defined in a class) or even simulate a variable to lua by using the getter and setter methods in a class. To make it a bit more interesting, we’re going to export two C++ template structures now. The concept of templates does not exist in lua, so we can only register an actual class or in other words a template instanced to a specific type.

template<typename T>
struct Point {
  Point(T X, T Y) :
    X(X), Y(Y) {}
 
  T X, Y;
};
 
template<typename T>
struct Box {
  Box(Point<T> UpperLeft, Point<T> LowerRight) :
    UpperLeft(UpperLeft), LowerRight(LowerRight) {}
 
  Point<T> UpperLeft, LowerRight;
};
 
int main() {
  // Create a new lua state
  lua_State *myLuaState = luaL_newstate();
 
  // Connect LuaBind to this lua state
  luabind::open(myLuaState);
 
  // Export our classes with LuaBind
  luabind::module(myLuaState) [
    luabind::class_<Point<float> >("Point")
      .def(luabind::constructor<float, float>())
      .def_readwrite("X", &Point<float>::X)
      .def_readwrite("Y", &Point<float>::Y),
 
    luabind::class_<Box<float> >("Box")
      .def(luabind::constructor<Point<float>, Point<float> >())
      .def_readwrite("UpperLeft", &Box<float>::UpperLeft)
      .def_readwrite("LowerRight", &Box<float>::LowerRight)
  ];
 
  // Now use this class in a lua script
  luaL_dostring(
    myLuaState,
    "MyBox = Box(Point(10, 20), Point(30, 40))\n"
    "MyBox.UpperLeft.X = MyBox.LowerRight.Y\n"
  );
 
  lua_close(myLuaState);
}

As you can see, the Lua script works perfectly with both classes, despite the fact that one is used within the other. The def_readwrite() method of luabind::class_ directly exports the point and box structure’s attributes and makes them available to the script. If all those template brackets are irritating you, there’s of course always the possibility to use a typedef instead!

You could now directly pass a Box or Point to a lua function you call through luabind::call_function() and it would work just the way you expect it to work.

More!

If you ever made a typo while working your way through this tutorial, you might have found yourself in front of an ugly run-time error message. This is due to the fact that luabind transforms lua errors into various exceptions, all derived from the common std::exception. If you wish to see a human-readable error message, a try..catch block has to be set up to catch std::exceptions!

We will now demonstrate this as well as explore some other useful parts of LuaBind:

struct ResourceManager {
  ResourceManager() :
    m_ResourceCount(0) {}
 
  void loadResource(const string &sFilename) {
    ++m_ResourceCount;
  }
  size_t getResourceCount() const {
    return m_ResourceCount;
  }
 
  size_t m_ResourceCount;
};
 
int main() {
  // Create a new lua state
  lua_State *myLuaState = luaL_newstate();
 
  // Connect LuaBind to this lua state
  luabind::open(myLuaState);
 
  // Export our class with LuaBind
  luabind::module(myLuaState) [
    luabind::class_<ResourceManager>("ResourceManager")
      .def("loadResource", &ResourceManager::loadResource)
      .property("ResourceCount", &ResourceManager::getResourceCount)
  ];
 
  try {
    ResourceManager MyResourceManager;
 
    // Assign MyResourceManager to a global in lua
    luabind::globals(myLuaState)["MyResourceManager"] = &MyResourceManager;
 
    // Execute a script to load some resources
    luaL_dostring(
      myLuaState,
      "MyResourceManager:loadResource(\"abc.res\")\n"
      "MyResourceManager:loadResource(\"xyz.res\")\n"
      "\n"
      "ResourceCount = MyResourceManager.ResourceCount\n"
    );
 
    // Read a global from the lua script
    size_t ResourceCount = luabind::object_cast<size_t>(
      luabind::globals(myLuaState)["ResourceCount"]
    );
    cout << ResourceCount << endl;
  }
  catch(const std::exception &TheError) {
    cerr << TheError.what() << endl;
  }
 
  lua_close(myLuaState);
}

The .property() method of luabind::class_ emulates an attribute in the lua class through getter and (optionally) setter methods in C++. It is not only shorter, but also far more natural to write Items = X.ItemCount than to write Items = X:getItemCount(). The other feature this example introduces is luabind::globals() which returns the lua globals table (where all of a script’s functions and global variables are stored) wrapped up in a luabind::object. In this example, we’re accessing a global named ResourceCount, which we need to cast to an integer using luabind::object_cast<>().

This should be enough to get you up to speed with LuaBind. Experiment with the examples and then go read the LuaBind docs, they’re not even harder to read than this article

There’s a lot more to LuaBind you can discover, like operator overloading, deriving classes from each other, read only properties, and more.

21 comments

Thomas Brown says:

April 1, 2012 at 1:19 pm (UTC 1 )

Im having a lot of problems settings up lua bind and boost. I have linked the libraries, included the headers. When I run it I get lots of unhandled exceptions and luabind moaning at boost
Cygon says:

April 1, 2012 at 1:41 pm (UTC 1 )

I take it you’re using Visual Studio 2010 and the demo application provided here at least works without any problems?

It’s hard to tell what might be going wrong — have you tried catching those exceptions and looking at what the messages they carry say?
Do you mean compiler warnings when you say LuaBind is moaning at Boost? Maybe I can tell more if you post the first 3 or so you’re getting!
Brendan says:

May 2, 2012 at 3:42 am (UTC 1 )

Thanks for this tutorial- it’s been very helpful, and the fact that you prepackaged the libraries is really awesome. Thank you!
manoj says:

May 3, 2012 at 11:55 am (UTC 1 )

excellent tutorial. i am new to lua. i want to call execute lua script from a file in my c++ program. in your first example, if the function add is placed in a separate file then how can it be called from main() function.
Chris says:

May 12, 2012 at 6:03 am (UTC 1 )

This tutorial is great, however, how do I get luabind to load a lua script file? Instead of typing lua in the string?
Cygon says:

May 12, 2012 at 10:23 am (UTC 1 )

Now it’s two of them

This is pretty basic stuff you’re asking and it’s not even about LuaBind. I mean, come on, if the method for executing a string is called luaL_dostring(), what might the method for executing a file be called? Hint: luaL_dofile().

Lua only has a handful of methods and its official documentation has a nice overview — if I search for “file” there, it takes me straight to dofile() and luaL_dofile().
Chris says:

May 12, 2012 at 5:59 pm (UTC 1 )

Thanks for your reply. I had been very frustrated with several unrelated programming problems yesturday and this difficulty spilled over into this.

I appreciate your help!
Cygon says:

May 25, 2012 at 9:37 am (UTC 1 )

No problem, I just asked a bit pointedly because the answer seemed so obvious
Tom Davy says:

July 4, 2012 at 12:21 am (UTC 1 )

Can you show what you header files you included? I’m having trouble just to even this program to even compile.
Cygon says:

July 4, 2012 at 8:46 am (UTC 1 )
There is a demo application available for download near the top of the article. It contains a LuaBindDemo.cpp that has all of the required headers included (so you could just copy & paste the sample code from this tutorial in there and compile – which is exactly what I’m doing each time I update the archive to verify the code snippets still work :p)

I’m including the Lua and LuaBind headers like this:
// Include the lua headers (the extern "C" is a requirement because we're // using C++ and lua has been compiled as C code) extern "C" { #include "lua.h" #include "lualib.h" #include "lauxlib.h" } // This is the only header we need to include for LuaBind to work #include "luabind/luabind.hpp"
Chris says:

July 5, 2012 at 2:46 pm (UTC 1 )

Hey There,

just started wrking with luabind, got a question about getting the output to my console with visual studio 2010.

With normal lua it worked just fine, i did not need to edit anything within lua to get it outputing to the standard console, but with luabind nothing is sent to the output. I am using dofile rather than do string.

I have wrapped the call in a try/catch and stepped through debugging and there are no errors with the call.

ANy help would be great.
Cygon says:

July 5, 2012 at 3:21 pm (UTC 1 )

It’s possible to redefine Lua’s print so that output gets sent wherever you want (a file, a list box in a GUI, etc.). On a lower level, stdout and stderr can also be redirected to achieve the same for any printf() and cout call.

But to my knowledge, LuaBind does neither.

You could try writing something to the console via std::cout and then repeat the same using luabind::call_function to see where the problem lies. Then move it to progressively earlier locations in your program until you can pinpoint where console output is being disabled/redirected.
Chris says:

July 5, 2012 at 4:08 pm (UTC 1 )

I am unsure why this is happening, but I ended up redirecting print to cout for now.

This does pose a problem for anything like print(45), I guess I can just create an overload for every possible print, I am not sure if there is another way around this.
Cygon says:

July 6, 2012 at 12:08 pm (UTC 1 )

You can still try to isolate it step by step. First check if Lua’s print() still works normally right after you created the lua state, then right after luabind::open(), then after you’ve bound your modules with luabind etc.

If replacing Lua’s print() method fixed the issue, it really sounds like luabind could be responsible (unless you’re using other libraries that integrated into Lua). I haven’t used luabind in my code since 0.2 versions ago
Cam says:

January 11, 2013 at 4:03 am (UTC 1 )

@Cygon, why don’t you use luabind anymore? What do you use instead?
Cygon says:

January 11, 2013 at 9:37 am (UTC 1 )

Mono. It has a very nice embedding API (http://www.mono-project.com/Embedding_Mono), and if you believe the programming language shootout, it’s almost 10 times faster than Lua.

My primary motivation however is that I find it easier to stay with C-like languages and that .NET’S class library is very complete, whereas in Lua I find that I always have to add many things myself.
Thomas says:

January 23, 2013 at 2:26 pm (UTC 1 )

Great tutorial Cygon. It was really helpful to get started. It’s not always easy to get started with new programming languages(I’ve been coding with C-like languages for a while now), but you’ve really saved me lots of trouble and the fact that you provided an “all in one” package is awesome. Thanks again!
Mathias says:

January 25, 2013 at 5:03 pm (UTC 1 )

Hello Cygon,
thank you very much for the great tutorial!
I would like to build luabind with VS2012. Could you please publish the luabind package you used and maybe a short description how to build? I had some troubles with building luabind for Lua 5.2…
Thanks!
Cygon says:

January 25, 2013 at 5:40 pm (UTC 1 )

Check the package I provided for download near the top of the article. It contains not only the demo and binaries, but there’s a LibrarySources.7z inside that has the LuaBind, Lua and Boost sources I used (LuaBind has 3 or 4 minor tweaks to make it compile and Boost is trimmed to the minimal set of headers required to compile LuaBind on VS2010).

I haven’t updated the package to VS2012 yet, but I think apart from Boost warning you about not knowing VS2012′s shiny new compiler, it should be possible to compile with VS2012, too.
Mathias says:

January 25, 2013 at 9:02 pm (UTC 1 )

Thanks – this helped!
priya says:

February 20, 2013 at 11:55 am (UTC 1 )

best tutorial…i’ve ever seen

Cygon's Blog

Game Programming Adventures

LuaBind Introduction

Getting your Hands on LuaBind Binaries

Calling Lua Functions from C++

Making C++ functions callable from Lua

Exporting Classes to Lua

Exporting class attributes and properties

More!

21 comments

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Exporting Classes to Lua

Exporting class attributes and properties

More!

21 comments

Thomas Brown says:

Cygon says:

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Tom Davy says:

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Chris says:

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