Apple:
Beginning on February 1, 2015 new iOS apps submitted to the App Store must include 64-bit support and be built with the iOS 8 SDK. Beginning June 1, 2015 app updates will also need to follow the same requirements. To enable 64-bit in your project, we recommend using the default Xcode build setting of “Standard architectures” to build a single binary with both 32-bit and 64-bit code.
The original version of Wax is not compatible with x64 systems, which means that if you use wax in your application you'll have to update it to this fork's version where i've made some hacks to make it compatible with x64 systems.
Wax is a framework that lets you write native iPhone apps in Lua. 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!
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...
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Automatic Garbage Collection! Gone are the days of alloc, retain, and release.
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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.
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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!
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Super easy HTTP requests. Interacting with a REST webservice has never been eaiser
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Lua has closures, also known as blocks! Anyone who has used these before knows how powerful they can be.
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Lua has a build in Regex-like pattern matching library.
For some simple Wax apps, check out the examples folder.
How would I create a UIView and color it red?
-- forget about using alloc! Memory is automatically managed by Wax
view = 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 way
view: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 function
UIApplication: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 self
end
function viewDidLoad()
-- Do all your other stuff here
end
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 received
wax.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)
They all are! I can't stress this enough, anything that is written in Objective-C (even external frameworks) will work automatically in Wax! UIAcceleration works like UIAcceleration, MapKit works like MapKit, GameKit works like GameKit, Snozberries taste like Snozberries!
Corey Johnson (probablycorey at gmail dot com)
Felipe Cavalcanti (fjfcavalcanti at gmail dot com) ---> Made compatible with ARM64 devices, actual mantainer
- Feature Requests? Bugs? - Issue tracking and release planning.
- Mailing List
Fork it, change it, commit it, push it, send pull request; instant glory!
n-wax is Copyright (C) 2015 Felipe Cavalcanti See the file LICENSE for information of licensing and distribution.
Wax is Copyright (C) 2009 Corey Johnson See the file LICENSE for information of licensing and distribution.