Re: modularizing lua code

[Tomas <tomas@...>]

	Hi Guido

> If I am passing structured data (hash table that can contain other
> hash tables, no cycles, nothing fancy, really), from the app server to
> the Lua application, how is this done in a very simple way?
>
> Simple goal is to share/transport data structures back and forth from
> the application server. Parsing JSON response from the RoR app server
> takes too long, so am considering a Lua native format for marshalled
> objects. Is there a spec or description of that so I can extend the
> RoR app to ouput Lua directly? And how would I unpack it from text in
> Lua? doFile? Is there a safe way to do this?
	Take a look at the session library in CGILua package.  It
uses a function to serialize tables (without cycles) which are stored
in the filesystem and retrieved with "dofile".  I think ALua uses the
same approach to comunicate over the network, by serializing Lua code
(not only data) and sending it to the receiver.  Rings, which is a
library that allows the creation of Lua states from Lua, also uses
strings to communicate, but it does not offer any tool to generate it.
I don't know what level of safety you need, but I think a simple "dofile"
should do the job.  Anyway you could take a look at these other tools.
		Tomas