How do I get the full path to the required value in the table? I want to track changes in another table through a proxy table.
I understand that I need to use metatables and __index in it. But I haven't been able to come up with a tracker yet.
Sample table structure:
Objects = {
Panel = { layer = 1, x = 600, y = 328, w = 331, h = 491;
objects = {
label = { layer = 1, x = 0, y = 0, text = 'header' };
Window = { layer = 2, x = 400, y = 100, w = 100, h = 100;
objects = {
label = { layer = 1, x = 0, y = 0, text = 'lorem ipsum dorem' };
};
};
};
};
};
Path: Objects.Panel.objects.Window.objects.label.text
I tried to create a metatable for each of the tables and collect the result of each call to __index into a table in order to roughly understand which key and value were retrieved or changed in order to synchronize these values with other tables.
This will prove itself to be horrendously slow and memory inefficient. Anyway, you were right on the track: proxy and handle __index and __newindex metamethods to your liking. This being said you also need to track the state of the proxy somehow.
You can try to hide it with some closures and upvalues but the easy way is to store the information directly in the proxy tables:
function make_tracker (o, name)
local mt = {}
mt.__index = function (proxy, key)
local path = {unpack(rawget(proxy, "__path"))} -- Stupid shallow copy
local object = rawget(proxy, "__to")
table.insert(path, key)
if type(object[key]) == "table" then
return setmetatable({__to = object[key], __path = path}, mt)
else
return table.concat(path, ".") .. " = " .. tostring(object[key])
end
end
return setmetatable({__to = o, __path = {name}}, mt)
end
__to fields indicates what proxy should point to and __path is there to cover fields we have trespassed so far. It does a shallow copy, so that one can use subproxies with local variables. name parameter is there to initialize the name of the first table, as you just simply can't know that. You use it like this:
local tObjects = make_tracker(Objects, "Objects")
local subproxy = tObjects.Panel.objects.Window
print(subproxy.objects.label.text)
print(tObjects.Panel.objects.label.text)
print(subproxy.x)
-- prints:
-- Objects.Panel.objects.Window.objects.label.text = lorem ipsum dorem
-- Objects.Panel.objects.label.text = header
-- Objects.Panel.objects.Window.x = 400
Of course, I doubt that appending the path to the original value is what you want. Modify insides of else block:
return table.concat(path, ".") .. " = " .. tostring(object[key])
according to your needs, e.g:
register_tracked_path(table.concat(path, "."))
return object[key]
If you want to handle modification of values you need to extend the metatable with similar __newindex.
I'd like to re-initialize a table without losing references to it.
What I want to achieve is defining tables in files, and when a file is changed (with a text editor) the file is reloaded, changing the table. Of course this doesn't change the table but creates a new instance, old references will still point to the old table.
Any suggestions?
EDIT: I want to elaborate on what I want to achieve. An example with game characters and weapons. I want to modify the weapons.lua and so affect the characters.
-- weapons.lua
sword = { damage = 3 }
-- characters.lua
character = { weapon = sword }
Adding a level of indirection (putting "sword" inside "weapons") like suggested by JWT doesn't help, unless I split character into { weaponTable = weapons, weaponKey = "sword" } but I don't see this as an option.
Anchor everything that needs to survive in the global environment. Nesting is fine, and this doesn't have to be your primary reference. (You can still local things, but make sure to initialize those local variables from the global environment and update the global if you change the local.)
To initialize the global values, say
foo = foo or value -- if foo is always true-ish
bar = (bar == nil) and value or bar -- if bar may be `false`
To initialize or update tables, you can
foo = foo or { }
foo.bar = foo.bar or 23
foo.baz = foo.baz or 42
-- and so on...
but that's kinda icky, so maybe say
function reinit( new, old ) -- (re)initialize one level, prefer old
if old == nil then return new end
if type( old ) ~= "table" then return old end
for k, v in pairs( new ) do
if old[k] == nil then old[k] = v end
end
return old
end
function reset( new, old ) -- (re)initialize one level, prefer new
if old == nil then return new end
if type( old ) ~= "table" then return new end
for k, v in pairs( new ) do old[k] = v end
return old
end
and then just
foo = reinit( { bar = 23, baz = 42 }, foo ) -- only setting if not defined
-- or
foo = reset( { bar = 23, baz = 42 }, foo ) -- always overriding given fields
or maybe make it even more fancy and say
function traverse( t, path )
local here, last, lastk, created = t
-- follow path of several keys starting from t, creating tables as needed
for k in path:gmatch "[^.]+" do
k = tonumber( k ) or k -- convert all-number keys to integer (for arrays)
local next = here[k]
if not next then
next, created = { }, true
here[k] = next
else
created = false
end
lastk, last, here = k, here, next
end
return here, last, lastk, created
end
function repopulate( path, value, update )
update = update or reinit -- pass 'reset' as 'update' for the other behavior
-- or something entirely different if that's what you need
local here, last, lastk, created = traverse( _G, path )
if type( value ) == "table" then
update( value, here )
else
if created then last[lastk] = nil end -- created one level too much
update( { [lastk] = value }, last )
end
end
and then (with arbitrary nesting)
-- No need to create 'state' first if it doesn't exist yet!
-- (If it exists, it will get updated, otherwise it's created)
repopulate( "state.player.weapon", { kind = "sword", damage = 11 } )
-- Do keep in mind that generally update order is relevant -- you may want to
-- give a newly created player a default inventory, but you may not want to
-- "refill" the player's inventory on every reload. So generally `repopulate`
-- with the parent and all child nodes for from-scratch creation, then
-- `repopulate` the child nodes that need to be checked & potentially updated
-- as well.
-- (So here you'd probably repopulate `state.player` first and then
-- `state.player.weapon` or other fields only if they should be updated anyway.)
-- e.g.:
repopulate( "state.player", {
x = 0, y = 0, hp = 100, mp = 100, level = 0, -- and so on
weapon = { kind = "sword", damage = 11 }, -- etc. etc.
} )
-- on reload always force a sword-kind weapon, leave rest (damage, ...) as-is
repopulate( "state.player.weapon", { kind = "sword" }, reset )
-- or alternatively: only if player has no weapon, give them a sword
repopulate( "state.player.weapon", { kind = "sword", damage = 3 } )
And you can go further, add metamethods to hide some of that shuffling, define different update policies, ... – you've seen some of the possibilities, now go and build your own version that fits your style and your code.
(While you're free to use the above code in any way, please note that it was written ad-hoc in the browser. I did some testing, fixed some glitches, and it seems to work now, but don't be surprised if there's still one or two bugs hiding in there. So play with this, change it, break it (and see how/why it breaks), adapt and extend it, ... – but unless you completely understand what it does and can fix any bugs, I strongly suggest you write your own version, or just stick to the basics. You probably don't need everything that this does, and you're likely to need other things that this doesn't do. As this is a central part of the reloading/live-coding infrastructure and everything has to be adapted to be reload-compatible, any mismatch between your tooling and what you actually need will result in a lot of pain everywhere in your code. So if you need something like this, put in a day or two to make it work the way you need it to, or you will regret it.)
(Free bonus warning: If you do OOP, you'll probably have to store and retrieve your classes instead of creating them every time, otherwise old objects from previous iterations will miss code updates and still run their old methods. I've forgotten about that more than just a couple of times and wasted several hours pondering "why isn't it fixed now?!?" after repeatedly re-loading code... So remember to anchor your metatables, anchor your classes!)
You could nest the tables in another table.
Before:
local a = { 1, 2, 3 }
local b = { 7, 8, 9 }
print(a[2] + b[2]) -- #=> 10
After:
local lookup = {
a = { 1, 2, 3 },
b = { 7, 8, 9 }
}
print(lookup.a[2] + lookup.b[2]) -- #=> 10
Then you can fully replace (or just update) a table in the lookup table and any dependent statements will use that updated value:
lookup.a = { 100, 50, 0 }
print(lookup.a[2] + lookup.b[2]) -- #=> 58
I don't know if it's exactly what you needed (As an ID is necessary) but I hope it will fit your needs.
meta = {
tables = {},
__call = function(arg, t)
for k, v in pairs(t) do
arg[k] = v
end
end,
__bnot = function(arg)
return arg.__key
end,
__newindex = function(arg, key, val)
meta.tables[arg.__key][key] = val
end,
__index = function(arg, key)
return meta.tables[arg.__key][key]
end
}
function RefTable(arg)
local newtable = {}
if arg ~= nil then
newtable.__key = arg
setmetatable(newtable, meta)
if meta.tables[arg] == nil then
meta.tables[arg] = {}
end
else
error("RefTable can't have nil key")
end
return newtable
end
-- Using the RefTable
sword = RefTable("Sword")
sword({damage = 3})
sword.cooldown = 10
character = {sword = sword}
print("base", sword.damage, sword.cooldown)
print("embed", character.sword.damage, character.sword.cooldown)
sword = RefTable("Sword")
sword({damage = 8, cooldown = 50})
print("embed2", character.sword.damage, character.sword.cooldown)
print(sword.__key, sword.cooldown)
ref = RefTable("Sword")
ref.cooldown = 1000
print(sword.cooldown)
I was working on this project about a year ago. I came back to it and now it throws an error when I run it the error is "attempt call field "drawers"(a table value)".
This is where the drawers field is
local Renderer = {}
local num_of_layers = 2
local insert = table.insert
local remove = table.remove
function Renderer:create()
local render = {}
render.drawers = {}
for i = 0, num_of_layers do
render.drawers[i] = {}
end
function render:addRenderer(obj, layer)
local l = layer or 0
insert(self.drawers(l), i, obj)
end
return render
end
return Renderer
This is where it is being called
local tlm = {}
function tlm:load()
renderer:addRenderer(self)
gameloop:addLoop(self)
end
This is not correct:
insert(self.drawers(l), obj)
self.drawers is not a function but a table. therefor a function call like self.drawers(1) results in an error.
If you wanted to insert an element to the table self.drawers at index l using Luas standard functions you should call:
table.insert(self.drawers, i, obj)
If you want to replace the value at index l you can simply write self.drawers[l] = obj
http://www.lua.org/manual/5.3/manual.html#pdf-table.insert
I'm going to simplify the situation as much as I can. I have the following code:
windows = { "window1", "window2" }
window1 = {
x = 100
y = 100
properties = { active = false, width = 200, height = 200 }
}
window2 = {
x = 0
y = 0
properties = { active = false, width = 200, height = 200 }
}
If I do the following, I get the correct output:
print (window1.x)
OUTPUT: 0
print (window1.properties.active)
OUTPUT: false
HOWEVER, if I iterate through the list, I get "nil" values for "l.x" and "l.properties.active":
for _,l in ipairs(windows) do
print (l)
print (l.x)
print (l.properties.active)
end
Is there a different way I need to iterate through the variables in the lists, so I can get the values?
That is not a nested table, but just a table containing strings. And, as you just saw, a string doesn't contain a value for the key "x".
You have to put the tables in a sequence:
local window1 = {...} -- first table
local window2 = {...} -- second table
local windows = {window1, window2}
for _,l in ipairs(windows) do
-- do stuff with l
end
Or, if you want to keep the list of strings and iterate over the strings, put the windows in a second table using these strings as a key.
local windowNames = { "window1", "window2" }
local windows = {}
windows.window1 = {...} -- first table
windows.window2 = {...} -- second table
for _,l in ipairs(windowNames) do
local ourWindow = windows[l]
-- do stuff with ourWindow
end
I'm writing a program with lua. I have data that organized in the following way:
t= {
i1 = {
p1 = { value = "i1p1" },
p2 = { value = "i1p2" },
-- etc
pm = { value = "i1pm" }
},
i2 = {
p1 = { value = "i2p1" },
p2 = { value = "i2p2" },
-- etc
pm = { value = "i2pm" }
},
im = {
p1 = { value = "imp1" },
p2 = { value = "imp2" },
-- etc
pm = { value = "impm" }
}
} --(inner tables)
In another way each group of data is indexed by two variables i&p,I am sure that the data is kept correctly but I want a way to print the data from their tables because I won't know the values of i and p to iterate over them or even the numbers n & m any body know how to do this with lua?
If you know the depth of your nested (inner) tables, you can iterate explicitly to that depth:
for k1,v1 in pairs(t) do
for k2,v2 in pairs(v1) do
for k3, v3 in pairs(v2) do
print(k3, ":", v3)
end
end
end
Alternatively, you can recursively iterate into your nested structure:
function print_tbl(tbl)
if type(tbl) == "table" then
for _,v in pairs(tbl) do
print_tbl(v)
end
else
print(tbl)
end
end
print_tbl(t)
This is just an example. If your tables contain functions, contains userdata, or your nesting has cycles, you'll need a different approach. Take a look at table serialization on the Lua user wiki. Serialization requires sensible handling of tables with nesting, functions, cycles, etc. You may be able to use lessons learned on your data.