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Luan Tutorial

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Create a file hello.luan containing:

\n\n\n%>\nHello World\n<%\n\n\n

To run this, type luan hello.luan on the command line. This should print Hello World.

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The syntax here is based on JSP. Let´s change it a little:

\n\n\nlocal name = \"Bob\"\n%>\nHello <%= name %>\n<%\n\n\n

This should print Hello Bob. Now let´s try a more conventional approach:

\n\n\nlocal Io = require \"luan:Io.luan\"\nlocal print = Io.print\n\nprint(\"Hello World\")\n\n\n

In Luan, a function call with one string argument doesn´t require parenthesis, so print(\"Hello World\") is the same as print \"Hello World\" and require \"luan:Io.luan\" is the same as require(\"luan:Io.luan\"). Both require and print are functions.

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The require function takes a URI as an argument. Examples of URIs are luan:Io.luan and file:hello.luan. require is used to import a module, which is returned from the require function call. In the case above, we assign the module to the local variable Io. The function print is a member of this module. We could have done Io.print(\"Hello World\") but instead we chose to assign print to a local variable and use that to call the function.

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Luan starts with only one defined function: require. You will use require to import whatever you need. This is a little more work, but makes it clear in each file where each function comes from.

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Let´s a make fancier version:

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\nlocal Io = require \"luan:Io.luan\"\nlocal print = Io.print\n\nlocal function hello(name)\n\tprint(\"Hello \"..name)\nend\n\nhello(\"Bob\")\n

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The .. operator does concatenation. This will print Hello Bob.

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Now let´s make a web page. First we need a directory for our website. So create a directory src. In this directory, create a file hi.html.luan containing:\n\n\nlocal Io = require \"luan:Io.luan\"\nlocal Http = require \"luan:http/Http.luan\"\n\nreturn function()\n\tIo.stdout = Http.response.text_writer()\n%>\n<!doctype html>\n<html>\n\t<body>\n\t\tHello Claude\n\t</body>\n</html>\n<%\nend\n\n\n\t\t