Basalt/docs/docs1_6/home/How-To.md

How-To

After downloading the project you can finally start creating your own program and use basalt. The first thing you want to use in your program is always:

local basalt = require("basalt")

It doesn't matter if you're using the source folder or the minified/packed version of basalt. Both can be found by using require("basalt") without .lua.

Also to really run basalt you should use

basalt.autoUpdate()

somewhere on the bottom of your program. basalt.autoUpdate() starts the event listener and the draw handler.

Example

Here is a fully working example of how a program could look like:

local basalt = require("basalt") --> Load the basalt framework into the variable called "basalt"

--> Now we want to create a base frame, we call the variable "main" - by default everything you create is visible. (you don't need to use :show())
local main = basalt.createFrame()

local button = main:addButton() --> Here we add our first button
button:setPosition(4, 4) -- of course we want to change the default position of our button
button:setSize(16, 3) -- and the default size.
button:setText("Click me!") --> This method displays what the text of our button should look like

local function buttonClick() --> Let us create a function we want to call when the button gets clicked 
    basalt.debug("I got clicked!")
end

-- Now we just need to register the function to the buttons onClick event handlers, this is how we can achieve that:
button:onClick(buttonClick)


basalt.autoUpdate() -- As soon as we call basalt.autoUpdate, the event and draw handlers will listen to any incomming events (and draw if necessary)

If you're like us and strive for succinct and beautiful code, here is a cleaner implementation of the code above:

local basalt = require("basalt")

local main = basalt.createFrame()
local button = main --> Basalt returns an instance of the object on most methods, to make use of "call-chaining"
        :addButton() --> This is an example of call chaining
        :setPosition(4,4) 
        :setText("Click me!")
        :onClick(
            function() 
                basalt.debug("I got clicked!") 
            end)

basalt.autoUpdate()