VerySimple.Lua 2.0 – a cross-platform Lua 5.3.0 wrapper for Delphi XE5-XE7

VerySimple.Lua is a Lua 5.3 binding for Delphi XE5- XE7 which automatically creates OOP callback functions for Win32, Win64, Mac OS X, iOS and Android.

“Lua is a powerful, fast, lightweight, embeddable scripting language, it has been used in many industrial applications (e.g., Adobe’s Photoshop Lightroom), with an emphasis on embedded systems (e.g., the Ginga middleware for digital TV in Brazil) and games (e.g., World of Warcraft). Lua is currently the leading scripting language in games and it has a deserved reputation for performance. To claim to be “as fast as Lua” is an aspiration of other scripting languages.”

• Lua 5.3.0 support (all header translations done from scratch)
• cross-platform – Windows 32 bit, Windows 64 bit, Mac OS X, iOS and Android
• improved autoregister function – with the help of TRtti it registers only valid methods
• simplified callback with upvalues instead of pointer list
• package support
• examples included (VCL and Firemonkey)

Example 1 – Simple usage

uses
  VerySimple.Lua;

begin
  Lua := TVerySimpleLua.Create;
  Lua.DoFile('example1.lua');
  Lua.Free;
end;

Example 2 – Extend Lua with own functions

uses
  VerySimple.Lua, VerySimple.Lua.Lib;

type
  TMyLua = class(TVerySimpleLua)
  published
    function HelloWorld(LuaState: TLuaState): Integer;
  end;

function TMyLua.HelloWorld: Integer;
 var
  ArgCount: Integer;
  I: integer;
begin
  writeln('Delphi: Hello World');
 
  ArgCount := Lua_GetTop(LuaState);
  writeln('Arguments: ', ArgCount);
  for I := 1 to ArgCount do
    writeln('Arg', I, ': ', Lua_ToInteger(LuaState, I));
 
  // Push return values
  Lua_PushInteger(LuaState, 101);
  Lua_PushInteger(LuaState, 102);
  Result := 2;
end;

var
  MyLua: TMyLua;

begin
  MyLua := TMyLua.Create;
  MyLua.DoFile('helloworld.lua');
  MyLua.Free;
end;

helloworld.lua

print("LuaDelphi Test");
p1,p2 = HelloWorld(1,5,15)
print "Results:";
print (p1);
print (p2);

Output:

LuaDelphi Test
Delphi: Hello World
Arguments: 3
Arg1: 1
Arg2: 5
Arg3: 15
Results:
101
102

Dynamic library vs. static library
VerySimple.Lua uses the lua dynamic library if compiled for Windows, Mac OS X or Android and uses the static library if compiled for iOS (all libraries included).

Unit tests
<excuse type=”lame”>This binding is based on my now 6 year old Lua 5.1 delphi binding, and I didn’t had time for writing (updated) unit tests</excuse>.

Automatic get/setters for properties, etc.
As the name implies: it is just a very simple Lua <-> delphi binding. Feel free to add those functions by yourself.