Hey guys, my friend was trying to get back into roblox and didn’t really like the lua way of doing OOP with metatables and __index spaghetti, so I made a wrapper that does it for him.
It’s pretty easy to make and only ~50 lines, but I wanted to open source it here since I think some people could still benefit from it 
It’s useful if you want to do OOP/classes but have no idea what the heck the __index/metatable stuff is or if you simply want a faster way to create them
Here you go
_G.NewClass = function()
local class = {}
class.__index = class
local new = function(...)
local self
if class.super then
self = setmetatable(class.super.new(...),class)
else
self = setmetatable({},class)
end
if class.Constructor then
class.Constructor(self,...)
end
return self
end
local extends = function(self,superclass)
setmetatable(self,{__index=superclass})
self.super = superclass
end
local superupdate = function(self,...)
if self.super then
if self.super.Update then
self.super.Update(self,...)
else
warn("No update method for super class!")
end
else
warn("Can't super update, no super class!")
end
end
local superdispose = function(self,...)
if self.super then
if self.super.Dispose then
self.super.Dispose(self,...)
else
warn("No dispose method for super class!")
end
else
warn("Can't super dispose, no super class!")
end
end
class.new = new
class.New = new
class.Extends = extends
class.extends = extends
class.superupdate = superupdate
class.SuperUpdate = superupdate
class.superdispose = superdispose
class.SuperDispose = superdispose
return class
end
Details
A class can have a Constructor method.
local class = _G.NewClass()
function class:Constructor(...)
-- do things with arguments ... from class.new()
end
class.new(...)
This just makes it so you can initialize a class without having to manually set the .__index to the class.
If you want a class to inherit methods from another class, simply do class:Extends(superclass)
local NPC = _G.NewClass()
function NPC:Constructor(name)
print("New NPC Created with name ",name)
self.Name = name
end
function NPC:DoNPCThing()
print("Did NPC Thing on ",self.Name)
end
local Human = _G.NewClass()
function Human:Constructor()
print("New Human Created")
end
function Human:DoHumanThing()
print("Did Human Thing on ",self.Name)
end
Human:Extends(NPC)
local NewHuman = Human.new("Frank")
NewHuman:DoHumanThing()
NewHuman:DoNPCThing()
New NPC Created with name Frank
New Human Created
Did Human Thing on Frank
Did NPC Thing on Frank
If you want to propagate disposal or update methods to the super class, simply do
self:SuperUpdate() or self:SuperDispose()
local NPC = _G.NewClass()
local Human = _G.NewClass()
Human:Extends(NPC)
function NPC:Constructor()
end
function NPC:Update(deltaTime)
print("NPC Updated")
-- Update NPC stuff!
end
function Human:Constructor()
end
function Human:Update(deltaTime)
self:SuperUpdate(deltaTime)
-- Update human stuff!
end
local NewHuman = Human.new()
NewHuman:Update()
NPC Updated