What is LuaClass?
LuaClass is an implementation of classes from JavaScript (to an extent). This does not include private variables due to Lua’s odd environment.
Documentation
Documentation has been removed as this project is no longer supported and deleted. The Wally installation method still works in case if you’re interested; however, if you do want the source code for yourself, you will have to get it from the last commit that it was present in my packages (d0fb17d).
Example
local new, class, extends, meta = require(game.ReplicatedStorage.Packages.LuaClass)()
class "Animal" {
constructor = function(this, name: string)
this.name = name
return this
end,
speak = function(this)
print(this.name .. " makes a noise.")
end,
}
local animal = new "Animal" ("Sprok")
animal.speak() -- "Sprok makes a noise."
class "Dog" [extends "Animal"] {
speak = function(this)
print(this.name .. " barks.")
end,
growl = function(this)
print(this.name .. " growls.")
end,
}
local dog = new "Dog" ("Mitzie")
dog.speak() -- "Mitzie barks."
dog.growl() -- "Mitzie growls."
Installing LuaClass
LuaClass is available via Wally and expects you to be using a Rojo workflow. If you rather download it from GitHub you can get the .zip file from it’s source.
Using Wally
[dependencies]
LuaClass = "alexinite/lua-class@0.1.2"
Comparisons
If you’ve never used Metatables to create sudo-classes, here’s an example of what that looks like versus the Animal and Dog classes I made earlier.
local Animal = {}
Animal.__index = Animal
function Animal.new(name: string)
local mt = {}
mt.name = name
setmetatable(mt, Animal)
return mt
end
function Animal:speak()
print(self.name .. " makes a noise.")
end
local animal = Animal.new("Sprok")
animal:speak() -- "Sprok makes a noise."
local Dog = {}
function Dog:__index(index)
return Dog[index] or Animal[index]
end
function Dog.new(name: string)
local mt = {}
mt.name = name
setmetatable(mt, Dog)
return mt
end
function Dog:speak()
print(self.name .. " barks.")
end
function Dog:growl()
print(self.name .. " growls.")
end
local dog = Dog.new("Mitzie")
dog:speak() -- "Mitzie barks."
dog:growl() -- "Mitzie growls."
and in TypeScript...
class Animal {
name: string
constructor(name: string) {
this.name = name;
}
speak() {
console.log(this.name + " makes a noise.")
}
}
const animal = new Animal("Sprok");
animal.speak(); // "Sprok makes a noise."
class Dog extends Animal {
constructor(name: string) {
super(name);
}
speak() {
console.log(this.name + " barks.");
}
growl() {
console.log(this.name + " growls.");
}
}
const dog = new Dog("Mitzie");
dog.speak(); // "Mitzie barks."
dog.growl(); // "Mitzie growls."
Metamethods
Whenever you’re creating a class in Lua, it might just be more practical to continue to use metamethods: this is still fully possible!
local new, class, extends, meta = require(game.ReplicatedStorage.Package.LuaClass)()
class "Animal" {
constructor = function(this, name: string)
this.name = name
return this
end,
[meta "index"] = function(this, index)
return this.name .. " " .. index .. "s."
end,
}
local animal = new "Animal" ("Mitzie")
print(animal["bark"]) -- "Mitzie barks."