ax is a framework that lets you write native iPhone apps in . It bridges Objective-C and Lua using the Objective-C runtime. With Wax, anything you can do in Objective-C is automatically available in Lua! What are you waiting for, give it a shot!
Why write iPhone apps in Lua?
I love writing iPhone apps, but would rather write them in a dynamic language than in Objective-C. Here are some reasons why many people prefer Lua + Wax over Objective-C...
Automatic Garbage Collection! Gone are the days of alloc, retain, and release.
Less Code! No more header files, no more static types, array and dictionary literals! Lua enables you to get more power out of less lines of code.
Access to every Cocoa, UITouch, Foundation, etc.. framework, if it's written in Objective-C, Wax exposes it to Lua automatically. All the frameworks you love are all available to you!
Super easy HTTP requests. Interacting with a REST webservice has never been eaiser
Lua has closures, also known as blocks! Anyone who has used these before knows how powerful they can be.
Lua has a build in Regex-like pattern matching library.
Examples
For some simple Wax apps, check out the .
How would I create a UIView and color it red?
-- forget about using alloc! Memory is automatically managed by Waxview = UIView:initWithFrame(CGRect(0, 0, 320, 100))-- use a colon when sending a message to an Objective-C Object-- all methods available to a UIView object can be accessed this wayview:setBackgroundColor(UIColor:redColor())
What about methods with multiple arguments?
-- Just add underscores to the method name, then write the arguments like-- you would in a regular C functionUIApplication:sharedApplication():setStatusBarHidden_animated(true, false)
How do I send an array/string/dictionary
-- Wax automatically converts array/string/dictionary objects to NSArray,-- NSString and NSDictionary objects (and vice-versa)images = {"myFace.png", "yourFace.png", "theirFace.png"}imageView = UIImageView:initWithFrame(CGRect(0, 0, 320, 460))imageView:setAnimationImages(images) What if I want to create a custom UIViewController?
-- Created in "MyController.lua"---- Creates an Objective-C class called MyController with UIViewController-- as the parent. This is a real Objective-C object, you could even-- reference it from Objective-C code if you wanted to.waxClass{"MyController", UIViewController}function init() -- to call a method on super, simply use self.super self.super:initWithNibName_bundle("MyControllerView.xib", nil) return selfendfunction viewDidLoad() -- Do all your other stuff hereend You said HTTP calls were easy, I don't believe you...
url = "http://search.twitter.com/trends/current.json"-- Makes an asyncronous call, the callback function is called when a-- response is receivedwax.http.request{url, callback = function(body, response) -- request is just a NSHTTPURLResponse puts(response:statusCode()) -- Since the content-type is json, Wax automatically parses it and places -- it into a Lua table puts(body)end} Since Wax converts NSString, NSArray, NSDictionary and NSNumber to native Lua values, you have to force objects back to Objective-C sometimes. Here is an example.
local testString = "Hello lua!"local bigFont = UIFont:boldSystemFontOfSize(30)local size = toobjc(testString):sizeWithFont(bigFont)puts(size)