Luadicrous is a wrapper around NLua and Gtk# that aims to bring beginner friendly, WPF inspired software development to Linux, Mac, and Windows.

Luadicrous apps are written in Lua and Xml with built in support for the Model-View-ViewModel (MVVM) application architecture. Views are defined in Xml and have a reference to a Lua script that builds a ViewModel. ViewModels contain BindableProperty fields and functions which are bound to properties and events on the UI.

Luadicrous also supports messaging via an event aggregator (implemented) and templating (coming soon).

Luadicrous depends on the Mono and Gtk# runtimes.

Mono and Gtk# installers for Windows

Download and run the Mono and Gtk# installers seperately.

Mono for Linux

Follow the installation instructions for your platform.

Mono for Mac

Download and install Mono, GTK is packaged with Mono on Mac.

Create a folder to contain your Luadicrous project (this folder will be refered to as your application folder). Build the Luadicrous.csproj project under the release configuration and copy the contents of the /bin/Release folder to a /bin/ directory in your application folder. You may need to manually restore nuget packages to build succesfully.

The application files will be layed out in this structure.

+ Demo
 - app.lua
 + bin
  - Luadicrous.exe
  - Luadicrous.Framework.dll
 + ViewModels
  - ShellViewModel.lua
 + Views
  - ShellView.xml

Create an app.lua file directly in your application folder. This script will need to create a window and load a control into it.

import 'Luadicrous.Framework.dll'
import 'Luadicrous.Framework'

-- Creates a Window object with title text
window = Window("Hello from Lua!") 

-- Loads the root view from the xml file that we will create next. Comment out these 2 lines of code to create an empty window.
shell = Control.LoadFromSource("Views/ShellView.xml")

-- Adds the shell to the window. Windows can only contian 1 thing at a time.
window:AddChild(shell)

-- Show the window to the user!
window:Render()

Create a Views folder and add this xml code to it.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<!-- The control will run the ViewModels/ShellViewModel.lua script to create its view model. -->
<Control BindingContext="ViewModels/ShellViewModel.lua">
    <!-- A vertical panel lays out controls from top to bottom. -->	
    <VerticalPanel>
        <!-- A Text control allows users to type text. It's value will be bound to a Text BindableProperty in the ViewModel. -->
        <Text Text="{Binding Text}" />
        <!-- A Label displays static text, in this case from a ReversedText BindableProperty in the ViewModel. -->
        <Label Text="{Binding ReversedText}" />
        <!-- A horizontal panel lays out controls from left to right. -->
        <HorizontalPanel>        
            <Label Text="Press to swap text:" />
            <!-- Buttons publish events when they are clicked. In this case it will run a function named Clicked in the ViewModel. -->
            <Button Click="{Binding Clicked}" >
                <!-- The button contains the text "Swap." -->
                <Label Text="Swap" />
            </Button>
        </HorizontalPanel>
    </VerticalPanel>	
</Control>

That last thing we need to do is create a view model for the ShellView to bind to. We do that by creating a script that returns a table. Create a ViewModels folder and add a script named ShellViewModel.lua.

import 'Luadicrous.Framework.dll'
import 'Luadicrous.Framework'

-- This function will be called by the framework whenever a new ShellViewModel is needed
function ViewModel()
    -- Create a table to contain the view model (vm).
    vm = {}
    
    -- The value of this property is 'Bound' by the framework to the Text property of the text entry control in the view.
    vm.Text = BindableProperty()
    
    -- This value is bound to the Text property of the Label in the view.
    vm.ReversedText = BindableProperty()
    
    -- Here we create a function to handle changes to the Text property.
    vm.Text.OnSet = (function ( newValue )
        local reversedString = string.reverse( newValue )
        vm.ReversedText:Set( reversedString )
    end)
    
    -- Here we create a function that handles the event when the 'Swap' button is clicked.
    vm.Clicked = (function ()
        -- Sets the value of Text to the value of ReversedText (which triggers the Text.OnSet event).
        vm.Text:Set(vm.ReversedText:Get())
    end)

    -- Now we return the view model table so that the framework can bind it to the view.
    return vm
end

To start your application run the /bin/Luadicrous.exe executable. It will search for your /app.lua script and run it.