Wax is a Lua <-> Objective C bridge by Corey Johnson. This module is a plugin for Gideros SDK that allows Wax to be used in Gideros apps. I've chosen to call this Hot Wax or BhWax. Some small changes have to be made to Corey's original Wax code so you are required to pull down a modified repository for this from my GitHub, called CoreyJohnsonWax.
The plugin also contains some new enhancements to allow Wax to play nicely with the (relatively) new blocks feature of Objective C. You can read more about BhWax, including instructions on how to build the plugin, in my blog entry.
This library also features a collection of demonstrations of the Hot Wax interface as listed below. You will also need one additional ObjectiveC file (UIImage+Save.m) to be included in the plugin, which contains a protocol extension to allow UIImage objects to resize and save themselves (this is only required for the image picker demo in [BhWaxDemo.lua]).
- [BhWaxDemo.lua] - Example that displays an image picker, a UITextView and a YouTube video.
- [BhWaxPhysicsDemo.lua] - Example showing Box2d physics interfacing with UIViews.
- [BhWaxSceneDemo.lua] - Example showing UIButtons obeying the rules of the Gideros Scene Manager.
- [BhWaxAutoComplete.lua] - Utility to generate Gideros API information for the Cocoa libraries.
The following utility modules may be useful in other projects:
- [IosImagePicker.lua] - Class to bring up an iOS image/photo picker dialog.
- [BhUIViewFrame.lua] - Class to wrap UIViews so the can interact with the Gideros scene hierarchy.
To run a particular demo, comment in one of the following lines in main.lua:
BhWaxDemo.new()
BhWaxPhysicsDemo.new()
BhWaxSceneDemo.new()
BhAutoComplete.new()
This module is part of the general Bowerhaus library for Gideros mobile. There are a number of cooperating modules in this library, each with it's own Git repository. In order that the example project files will run correctly "out of the box" you should create an appropriate directory structure and clone/copy the files within it.
#####/MyDocs Place your own projects in folder below here
#####/MyDocs/Library Folder for library modules
#####/MyDocs/Library/Gideros Folder for miscellaneous Gideros classes, including SceneManager. You will NEED THIS MODULE.
#####/MyDocs/Library/Misc Folder for miscellaneous classes, such as GTween and Easing. You will NEED THIS MODULE.
#####/MyDocs/Library/Bowerhaus Folder containing sub-folders for all Bowerhaus libraries
#####/MyDocs/Library/Bowerhaus/BhHelpers Folder for helper/utility functions. You will NEED THIS MODULE.
#####/MyDocs/Library/Bowerhaus/BhWax Folder for THIS MODULE
#####/MyDocs/Library/CoreyJohnsonWax Folder for MODIFIED VERSION OF WAX
A quick demonstration of the Hot Wax Lua-ObjectiveC bridge as tuned for Gideros SDK.
KUDOS TO COREY JOHNSON. This Wax stuff is truly magic!
Because of the nature of ObjectiveC, this demonstration is ONLY FOR IOS.
In this demo we bring up a native IOS ImagePicker and allow the user to choose a photo from the photo library. Once an image is picked, it is resized and saved to our documents directory from where it is loaded as a standard Gideros Bitmap. You are then given the opportunity to write a title for the photo using an IOS multiline UITextView. After that, if you click on the YouTube logo, you'll see a video showing how to get started with Wax and Gideros.
Please note, for this example to work, you will need to build your Gideros player with one additional ObjectiveC file (UIImage+Save.m), which contains a protocol extension to allow UIImage objects to resize and save themselves.
The intention behind this demonstration is to show how UIViews created using Hot Wax can be manipulated in much the same way as the other Gideros display objects such as [Sprite]s.
As the screen is touched, this demo creates a new editable UITextView populated with some default text. Each text view is under control of the Box2d physics engine and can be seen to fall with gravity, whilst also colliding with other views previously created. The gravity force can be altered by tilting the device and each UITextView can be edited while it is "falling".
Hot Wax allows you to write Cocoa code directly in Lua, inside the Gideros IDE. However, the ObjectiveC method selectors are often quite long and difficult to remember.
This demo will walk the Cocoa class object tree and generate an autocompletion file of all the class and instance methods for the classes that you specify. This autocompletion file, "cocoa_annot.txt", can be appended to the "gideros_annot.api" file which is to be found in the "Gideros Studio/Contents/Resources" folder. Note that you will have to use "Show Package Contents" to drill into the Gideros Studio applicatuion to find this location.
You must restart Gideros Studio after updating this file in order to see the new autocompletion annotations working.
The intention behind this demonstration is to show how UIButtons created using Hot Wax and wrapped with [BhUIViewFrame] objects can obey the rules of the Gideros SceneManager. As an aside this sample also shows the use of the Text to Speech feature that is available as part of Google Translate.
This is a Hot Wax class to bring up the standard IOS ImagePicker. We get a callback to a supplied handler function if an image is picked successfully. The handler is passed the real ObjectiveC UIImage object to do with what we will.
This code is almost a drop-in replacement for the plugin code that I wrote in BhImagePicker.mm (see here). However, that code is more complex to understand (IMO), needs to be careful with memory management and has 432 lines compared with 130 or so. Seems like a hands down win for Hot Wax to me.
[IosImagePicker] is a Wax Class that brings up an iOS ImagePicker dialog to allow the user to choose an image from the device camera or photo library. The picked image will be passed to a callback handler function as an UIImage object.
function IosImagePicker:pickImage(sourceType, handlerFunc, handlerTarget) [IosImagePicker:pickImage]
Bring up an image picker based on what sort of device we are running on. We are passed a callback handler function to use when an image is chosen by the user.
- sourceType - an integer describing the device location where the image should be picked from. Can be one of the UIImagePickerControllerSourceType enum values. Hence, UIImagePickerControllerSourceTypePhotoLibrary, UIImagePickerControllerSourceTypeCamera, UIImagePickerControllerSourceTypeSavedPhotosAlbum are valid options.
- handlerFunc - the function that will be called when an image has been picked. The picked image is passed as an UIImage parameter.
- handlerTarget - (optional) target object of the handler function if it is an instance method.
local picker=IosImagePicker:init()
picker:pickImage(UIImagePickerControllerSourceTypePhotoLibrary, self.onImagePicked, self)
function MyClass:onImagePicked(uiImage)
uiImage:savePNG("|D|pickedImage.png")
end
Implements [BhUIViewFrame]; a useful wrapper around Wax UIViews that allow them to be manipulated in much the same way as Gideros [Sprite]s.
A [BhUIViewFrame] may be placed in the normal Gideros display hierarchy and can be moved around with tweening or physics. The UIView associated with this frame will be automatically matched up in terms of position, size, rotation, visibility and also alpha.
Note that this uses an ENTER_FRAME handler to apply the transformations and each of these many involve several Wax calls. Hence, even though we try to minimise the effort when nothing has been changed, you should be aware that animating many [BhUIViewFrame]s at once may have a performance penalty.
Constructor for a [BhUIViewFrame] that will wrap the supplied UIView. It is assumed that uiview will not yet have been added to the iOS root view controller. When the frame object is eventually added to the Gideros stage, the associated UIView will also be added to the root view at the same time.
local uiview=UITextView:initWithFrame(CGRect(0, 0, width, height))
local frame=BhUIViewFrame.new(uiview)
stage:addChild(frame)
frame:setPosition(x, y)
GTween.new(frame, 2, {x=100, y=50})