Conventions

Some coding conventions for Space Lua. Work in progress.

Indentation

Use 2 spaces for indentation.

Variable naming

For variables and methods alike use camelCasing as opposed to snake_case. That is: myVariable and myFunction instead of my_variable and my_function.

Name spacing

Since Space Lua has a single global namespace across your entire space, it is good practice to manually namespace functions using the following pattern:

-- This initializes the stuff variable with an empty table if it's not already defined
stuff = stuff or {}
 
function stuff.adder(a, b)
  return a + b
end

And to use local if you don’t need to access outside your code block:

local myVariable
 
local function myFunction()
  
end

Use singular top-level namespaces for APIs

Such as widget, tag.

Use plural namespaces for collections

Such as widgets.

API naming conventions

*.define

This is a common Space Lua API naming convention used to define new entities of some type globally. Such APIs typically take a single table with arguments as an argument.

Internally, these APIs typically update the config as a side effect, which is then read elsewhere.

Examples:

• API/tag > tag.define(spec)
• API/taskState > taskState.define(def)
• API/config > config.define(key, schema)
• API/slashCommand > slashCommand.define(spec)
• ^Library/Std/APIs/Command > command.define(commandDef)

*.new

These like constructors for objects and do not have side effects.

Examples:

API/widget > widget.new(spec)