lua - store closure in C, invoke async in C

Question

I need an idea, how I can store lua closures to invoke them asynchronously later.

1. my first idea was lua_tocfunction but a closure is not a cfunction and cannot be invoked from C directly
2. second idea was to save the closure in the metatable, that I can push it and call it later, but it seems, that I cannot copy a closure. (Error: attempt to index a function value).

So I need your help please. How can I store a closure?

I admit, that I did not completely understand why there is an __index field in my lua ctor as I've copied that part from somewhere.

By the way: the program without onrender worked as expected. I'm using qt gui and the lua-states are closed, after qt's main loop, thus the created window is not going to be delete by __gc after the script.

bootstrap.lua

local w = w_render() -- create window object
w:show()

w:onrender(function()
    print('render')
end)

w_lua.cpp

// chlua_* are helper macros/templates/methods
// 1: self
// 2: render closure

int w_render_onrender(lua_State *L) {
    auto *self = chlua_this<GLWindow *>(L, 1, w_render_table);

    lua_pushvalue(L, 2); // copy closure to top
    lua_setfield(L, 2, "onrender_cb"); // save closure in metatable
    // !!! ERROR: attempt to index a function value



    self->onrender([L](){
        lua_getfield(L, 2, "onrender_cb");
        qDebug() << "onrender";
        lua_call(L, 0, 0);
    });

    return 0;
}

// Creates the object
int w_render(lua_State *L) {
    auto *&self = chlua_newuserdata<GLWindow *>(L);
    self = new GLWindow;

    if (luaL_newmetatable(L, w_render_table)) {
        luaL_setfuncs(L, w_render_methods, 0);
        lua_pushvalue(L, -1);
        lua_setfield(L, -2, "__index");
    }

    lua_setmetatable(L, -2);
    return 1;
}

Answer 1

It looks like your problem is stemming from using the wrong indices and attempting to set/get fields on the wrong lua object on the stack. Assuming the udata representing your GLWindow * is first followed by the lua closure second, try changing the code like this:

int w_render_onrender(lua_State *L)
{
  luaL_checkudata(L, 1, w_render_table);
  luaL_checktype(L, 2, LUA_TFUNCTION);
  auto *self = chlua_this<GLWindow *>(L, 1, w_render_table);

  lua_getmetatable(L, 1);
  lua_insert(L, -2);      // GLWindow GLWindow_mt lua_closure
  lua_setfield(L, -2, "onrender_cb"); // save closure in metatable


  self->onrender([L]()
  {
    luaL_checkudata(L, 1, w_render_table);
    // assuming GLWindow udata is self and onrender_cb is your lua closure above
    // access GLWindow.onrender_cb through GLWindows's metatable
    lua_getfield(L, 1, "onrender_cb");
    qDebug() << "onrender";
    luaL_checktype(L, -1, LUA_TFUNCTION); // Just to be sure
    lua_call(L, 0, 0);
  });

  return 0;
}

Edit: After thinking about this some more, it probably makes more sense to create a lua reference using luaL_ref. This way you don't have to care what happens to be on the stack when self->onrender actually runs, which I'm assuming is async:

int w_render_onrender(lua_State *L)
{
  luaL_checkudata(L, 1, w_render_table);
  luaL_checktype(L, 2, LUA_TFUNCTION);
  auto *self = chlua_this<GLWindow *>(L, 1, w_render_table);

  auto lua_cb = luaL_ref(L, LUA_REGISTRYINDEX);
  // just to check that what's on the stack shouldn't matter
  lua_settop(L, 0);

  self->onrender([L, lua_cb]()
  {
    lua_rawgeti(L, LUA_REGISTRYINDEX, lua_cb);
    luaL_checktype(L, -1, LUA_TFUNCTION); // Just to be sure
    qDebug() << "onrender";
    lua_call(L, 0, 0);
    luaL_unref(L, LUA_REGISTRYINDEX, lua_cb); // assuming you're done with it
  });

  return 0;
}