HI,

I'm attempting to implement a system where I can register any function as a delegate; as a first step I'm setting up an environment where I can pass a function identifier to the c++ side and have it be called immediately. Once I have this working I'll store a list of luabind::object and call them, thus implementing a nice delegate system. The problem is, I cant

This is my code for the c++ side:



#include "common.h"
#include <luabind/object.hpp>

void callObject(luabind::object const& obj)
{
int stuff = luabind::call_function<int>(obj, 9001);

std::cout<<"function was called c++ side, return value was "<<stuff<<std::endl;
}

extern "C" DLLEXPORT int delegate(lua_State* L)
{
open(L);

module(L)
[
def("callObject",&callObject)
];

return 0;
}



This is the lua script I am using to call this; it gets as far as performing the test call, and then panics.



-- performing callObject on a plain old function
freeFunction = function(iValue)
print("function got called lua side, passed value was", iValue)
return 12
end

-- this is the function I have bound from the c++ side
callObject(freeFunction)



-- performing callObject on a member function
class "Lol"
function Lol:__init(sName)
self.name = sName
end

function Lol:butnFoo_onClick(iValue)
print("butnFoo_onClick got called with paramater", iValue, "on Lol with name", self.name)
return 1
end

-- instance the class and call the function to ensure it is correct
lol = Lol("fubar")
lol:butnFoo_onClick(99)

-- pass a function ptr to callObject (fails)
callObject(lol.butnFoo_onClick))



The last line fails silently. Why is lol.butnFoo_onClick fundamentally different to freeFunction?

- edit: apologies for using c++ syntax highlighting for lua code; the new bbcode doesnt allow attributes in the code tag; if you use them, it dumps it all as plain text

The difference is that the free function expects just an int as it's first parameter but
Lol:butnFoo_onClick(iValue) [font="Arial"]is a syntactic sugar to this: Lol.butnFoo_onClick(self,iValue)
like in C++ the function needs the this pointer.

Hope this helps.

It explains the problem but doesnt help me with a solution. How can I bypass this problem? I need some way of passing around the member functions of a Lua class.

It seems im trying to force one possible solution into this. What other ways are there of binding a member function of a Lua class into the c++ side? For example, if I wanted to implement callbacks for a GUI which work in the way JS callbacks do?

The only point of concern is that on the c++ side it needs to be transparent whether the function is a member of a class. I'm not terribly concerned if I have to use a different side in each case on the Lua side.

I actually found a solution entirely on the Lua side:




class "MemFunction"
function MemFunction:__init(callee, func)
self.callee = callee
self.func = func
end

function MemFunction:__call(...)
return self.func(self.callee, ...)
end


Since the difference between a normal and an overloaded Lua __call is transparent on the c++ side, nothing more needs to be done.