I'm aware there are a few questions about implementing OOP in Lua on this site, however, this one is a bit different (at least compared to what I found).
I'm trying to create a class called "human", and make it so objects created with the "new" constructor of "human", inherit everything inside human except it's constructor. However, I also don't want to be able to use methods inside of human, on human. So whatever's inside the human class, is only passed to created objects. Here's an example:
-- "Human" class
human = {}
function human.new(name)
local new = {} -- New object
-- Metatable associated with the new object
local newMeta =
{
__index = function(t, k)
local v = human[k] -- Get the value from human
print("Key: ", k)
if type(v) == "function" then -- Takes care of methods
return function(_, ...)
return v(new, ...)
end
else
return v -- Otherwise return the value as it is
end
end
}
-- Defaults
new.Name = name
new.Age = 1
return setmetatable(new, newMeta)
end
-- Methods
function human:printName()
print(self.Name)
end
function human:setAge(new)
self.Age = new
end
-- Create new human called "bob"
-- This works as expected
local bob = human.new("Bob")
print(bob.Name) -- prints 'Bob'
bob:printName() -- prints 'Bob'
bob:setAge(10) -- sets the age to 10
print(bob.Age) -- prints '10'
-- But I don't want something like this allowed:
local other = bob.new("Mike") -- I don't want the constructor passed
-- I'd also like to prevent this from being allowed, for "human" is a class, not an object.
human:printName()
So creating the object with human.new("Bob") works fine, but it also passes the constructor, and I can still use the object methods on the class. I'm very new to the concept of OOP, so I'm sorry if this was a horrible question. But if anyone could help, I'd appreciate that.
baseif you're looking for a nice foundation for this kind of thing. The source code is pretty self-explanatory, and might provide some insight.