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Working with Objects

On this page:

• Objects and Classes
• Class Reference
• Addressing Objects
• Calling Methods
• Using type() on Objects

In the HALion Script language, the elements that make up the program, MIDI and note expression events, the definitions of parameters, etc., are all represented by objects. HALion Script provides dedicated functions for modifying these objects. To understand the principles of writing scripts that operate on objects, some terminology from object-oriented programming will be helpful.

Objects and Classes

Object-oriented programming (OOP) is a style of programming based on the concept of objects. In OOP objects are organized in classes. A class provides data fields and methods for an object. The data fields describe what the object is and the methods describe what it can do. A concrete occurance of an object is called an instance. The elements in the Program Tree are instances of different types of objects, for example, Bus objects, Layer objects, Zone objects, etc. MIDI and note expression events are represented by Event objects and each parameter has a ParameterDefinition object.

Class Reference

The classes/objects of the HALion Script language are structured in the following class hierarchy.

HALion Script Class Hierarchy

• Audio File
• Element
  • Bus
  • Effect
  • Instance
  • Layer
    • Program
  • MidiModule
  • ModulationMatrixRow
  • Slot
  • Zone
• Event
• LoadProgress
• ParameterDefinition

Classes deeper down inherit the data fields and methods of classes higher up in the class hierarchy. For example, the classes Bus, Instance, Layer, Effect, and so on, inherit all data fields and methods of the Element class. Subclasses add functionality to their parent class by providing more data fields and methods.

Addressing Objects

The Lua Script MIDI module itself can be addressed with this. Further objects can be addressed with this.parent, this.program or with the respective get and find functions.

After addressing an object, you can read its fields through dot-notation. In the following example, the name and the type of different objects are printed with .name and .type.

Example 1

-- Print the name and type of different objects.

print(this.name, this.type)
print(this.parent.name, this.parent.type)
print(this.program.name, this.program.type)
print(this.program:getChild().name, this.program:getChild().type)

Calling Methods

To operate on an element in the Program Tree, you must first address its object and then call the desired method. The basic syntax is as follows:

object:method()

Example 2

-- Get the object of the first Zone after the script module.

zone = this.parent:getZone()

-- setName operates on the Zone object.

zone:setName("MyZone")

Using type() on Objects

For the HALion Script language the type() function of Lua has been extended to return the type of an object.

Example 3

-- Print the name of all zones in the program.

elements = this.program:findChildren(true)

for i, element in ipairs(elements) do
    if type(element) == "Zone" then
        print(element.name)
    end
end