Getting back the "class" of a ZO_Object subclass instance

[sirinsidiator]

Oh great Lua guru, I summon thee, please heed my call!

I am in need of some great Lua magic.

I have two questions.
Is it possible to access local variables from a different file that are not exposed in any way? Probably not, but I figured I'd just ask anyway.
UNITFRAME_BAR_STYLES in unitframes.lua does not have any way to access it indirectly.

And is it possible to get the "class" of a ZO_Object subclass back from an instance and create new objects of that type?
Or more specifically UnitFrameBar.
I can for example access an instance of that class with the following code:

local group1 = ZO_UnitFrames_GetUnitFrame("group1")
group1.healthBar -- this is a UnitFrameBar
-- some magic needs to happen here to get UnitFrameBar
local myUnitFrameBar = UnitFrameBar:New(...)

[TinfoilPancakes]

As to your first question, unfortunately no local keeps it within it's own scope wether it is file or function or whatever. You could however define a function in global namespace that can access it for you. The data is still there just restricted. I'm not entirely sure if that is what you were hoping for :/

As to the second question: I'm not sure you can subclass directly like that but I thought there was a way to define a control that inherits from another control? Would that work?

[haggen]

Very easily. The Subclass method that ZOS have implemented is nothing but a pretty way to update the meta table of a table, so you have acess to that class just by using the 'getmetatable' method.

Incidentally I had to access the same class you're looking for right now, and here's how I've done it:

local sampleUnitFrame = ZO_UnitFrames_GetUnitFrame("reticleover")
UnitFrame = getmetatable(sampleUnitFrame)
UnitFrameBar = getmetatable(sampleUnitFrame.healthBar)

Please note that changing methods of the class only affect its instances if they haven't overridden said method.

About UNITFRAME_BAR_STYLES you've answered it yourself, you can't change that. But I have been in situations where I had the same need you have now. A nice example would be this one, from the same add-on I took the first snippet:

local function ImproveTargetUnitFrame()
    local unitFrame = ZO_UnitFrames_GetUnitFrame("reticleover")
 
    local healthBar = unitFrame.healthBar
    local healthBarControl = healthBar.barControls[1]
 
    local healthBarLabel = CreateControlFromVirtual(healthBarControl:GetName().."SiufLabel", healthBarControl, "SiufLabel")
    healthBarLabel:SetText(GetBarText(healthBar.currentValue, healthBar.maxValue))
    healthBarLabel:SetFont("SiufLabelFont")
    healthBarLabel:SetAnchor(CENTER, nil, RIGHT, 0, 0)
 
    local previousValue
 
    function unitFrame:RefreshUnit(unitChanged)
        UnitFrame.RefreshUnit(self, unitChanged)
        if unitChanged then
            previousValue = nil
        end
    end
 
    function healthBar:UpdateText(...)
        -- UnitFrameBar.UpdateText(self, ...)
        healthBarLabel:SetText(GetBarText(self.currentValue, self.maxValue, previousValue))
        previousValue = self.currentValue
    end
end

You can see above how I override some methods of the instance, and call the same method but now from the class to keep the same functionality without having to write it myself.

[sirinsidiator]

Thank you very much. Got it to work like I want now.

[merlight]

Originally Posted by sirinsidiator Is it possible to access local variables from a different file that are not exposed in any way? Probably not, but I figured I'd just ask anyway. UNITFRAME_BAR_STYLES in unitframes.lua does not have any way to access it indirectly.

Not in ESO, because the debug module is not there: http://www.lua.org/manual/5.1/manual...bug.getupvalue

Some locals are accessible by a trick I used when add-on manager (control wrapper) was local in some func -- I hooked one of its class methods, and when it was called, stored self. Basically if the local is passed to some globally accessible function, and you can force (or wait for) the surrounding code to call that function with the local, you can get it