README.md

Dibidab Header Tool

This tool will generate reflection code, Lua bindings and JSON-(de)serialization code for headers in game projects using the Dibidab-engine.

struct Person
{
    // This is a component, generate functions for adding/removing this to entities:
  dibidab_component;

    // Expose the following variables to Lua, and generate JSON (de)serialization code for them: 
  dibidab_expose(lua, json);
    std::string name;
    int age = 24;

    // Expose the following variable only to Lua, don't save/load them using JSON:
  dibidab_expose(lua);
    std::vector<int> numbers = { 3, 4, 5 };
};

Then the struct is available to use as a component in Lua:

component.Person.getFor(entity).age = 25

You can construct the type with a 'table-constructor':

setComponents(entity, {
    Person {
        name = "Hilko",
        age = 25,
        numbers = { 1, 2, 3 }
    },
    SomeOtherComponent {
        ...
    }
})

Usage

Include the CMake file of this tool in your CMakeLists.txt and call the function. This function will run the header tool for all .dibidab.h headers once during CMake configuration and will rerun for a header upon compilation if CMake has detected a file change.

(Assuming this repo is stored in external/dibidab-header/):

include(${CMAKE_CURRENT_LIST_DIR}/external/dibidab-header/tool/dibidab_header.cmake)
process_dibidab_headers(
    # Source directory (to search for .dibidab.h headers):
    ${CMAKE_CURRENT_LIST_DIR}/source
    # Output directory:
    ${CMAKE_CURRENT_LIST_DIR}/source/dibidab_generated
    # namespace to put the generated registry in:
    MyProjectNamespace
)

Examples

An example header is included in examples/.

To run the tool: python tool/src/dibidab_header.py <input-header> <out-directory>

To confirm the header is still valid C++: g++ examples/example.dibidab.h -Iinclude/

Dependencies

Generated code is for use with the Dibidab-engine. There will be #includes that reference headers from the engine and from Sol3, EnTT and Json for Modern C++,

Tested with python 3.10. Pip packages are listed in tool/requirements.txt