Editor scripts and UI

This manual explains how to create interactive UI elements in the editor using editor scripts written in Lua. To get started with editor scripts, see Editor Scripts manual. You can find the full editor API reference here. Currently, it’s only possible to create interactive dialogs, though we want to expand the UI scripting support to the rest of the editor in the future.

Hello world

All UI-related functionality exists in the editor.ui module. Here is the simplest example of an editor script with a custom UI to get started:

local M = {}

function M.get_commands()
    return {
        {
            label = "Do with confirmation",
            locations = {"View"},
            run = function()
                local result = editor.ui.show_dialog(editor.ui.dialog({
                    title = "Perform action?",
                    buttons = {
                        editor.ui.dialog_button({
                            text = "Cancel",
                            cancel = true,
                            result = false
                        }),
                        editor.ui.dialog_button({
                            text = "Perform",
                            default = true,
                            result = true
                        })
                    }
                }))
                print('Perform action:', result)
            end
        }
    }
end

return M

This code snippet defines a View → Do with confirmation command. When you execute it, you will see the following dialog:

Finally, after pressing Enter (or clicking on the Perform button), you’ll see the following line in the editor console:

Perform action:	true

Basic concepts

Components

The editor provides various UI components that can be composed to create the desired UI. By convention, all components are configured using a single table called props. The components themselves are not tables, but immutable userdatas used by the editor for creating the UI.

Props

Props are tables that define inputs into components. Props should be treated as immutable: mutating the props table in-place will not cause the component to re-render, but using a different table will. UI is updated when the component instance receives a props table that is not shallow-equal to the previous one.

Alignment

When the component gets assigned some bounds in the UI, it will consume the whole space, though it does not mean that the visible part of the component will stretch. Instead, the visible part will take the space it needs, and then it will be aligned within the assigned bounds. Therefore, most built-in components define an alignment prop.

For example, consider this label component:

editor.ui.label({
    text = "Hello",
    alignment = editor.ui.ALIGNMENT.RIGHT
})

The visible part is the Hello text, and it’s aligned within the assigned component bounds:

Built-in components

The editor defines various built-in components that can be used together to build the UI. Components may be roughly grouped into 3 categories: layout, data presentation and input.

Layout components

Layout components are used for placing other components next to each other. Main layout components are horizontal, vertical and grid. These components also define props such as padding and spacing, where padding is an empty space from the edge of the assigned bounds to the content, and spacing is an empty space between children:

Editor defines small, medium and large padding and spacing constants. When it comes to spacing, small is intended for spacing between different sub-elements of an individual UI element, medium is for spacing between individual UI elements, and large is a spacing between groups of elements. Default spacing is medium. With paddings, large means padding from the edges of the window to content, medium is padding from the edges of a significant UI element, and small is a padding from the edges of small UI elements like context menus and tooltips (not implemented yet).

A horizontal container places its children one after another horizontally, always making the height every child fill the available space. By default, the width of every child is kept to a minimum, though it’s possible to make it take as much space as possible by setting grow prop to true on a child.

A vertical container is similar to horizontal, but with the axes switched.

Finally, grid is a container component that lays out its children in a 2D grid, like a table. The grow setting in a grid applies to rows or columns, therefore it’s set not on a child, but on column configuration table. Also, children in a grid may be configured to span multiple rows or columns with row_span and column_span props. Grids are useful for creating multi-input forms:

editor.ui.grid({
    padding = editor.ui.PADDING.LARGE, -- add padding around dialog edges
    columns = {{}, {grow = true}}, -- make 2nd column grow
    children = {
        {
            editor.ui.label({ 
                text = "Level Name",
                alignment = editor.ui.ALIGNMENT.RIGHT
            }),
            editor.ui.string_field({})
        },
        {
            editor.ui.label({ 
                text = "Author",
                alignment = editor.ui.ALIGNMENT.RIGHT
            }),
            editor.ui.string_field({})
        }
    }
})

The code above will produce the following dialog form:

Data presentation components

The editor defines 4 data presentation components:

• label — text label, intended to be used with form inputs.
• icon — an icon; currently, it can only be used for presenting a small set of predefined icons, but we intend to allow more icons in the future.
• heading — text element intended for presenting a heading line of text in e.g. a form or a dialog. The editor.ui.HEADING_STYLE enum defines various heading styles that include HTML’s H1-H6 heading, as well as editor-specific DIALOG and FORM.
• paragraph — text element intended for presenting a paragraph of text. The main difference with label is that paragraph supports word wrapping: if the assigned bounds are too small horizontally, the text will wrap, and possibly will be shortened with "..." if it can’t fit in the view.

Input components

Input components are made for the user to interact with the UI. All input components support enabled prop to control if the interaction is enabled or not, and define various callback props that notify the editor script on interaction.

If you create a static UI, it’s enough to define callbacks that simply modify locals. For dynamic UIs and more advanced interactions, see reactivity.

For example, it’s possible to create a simple static New File dialog like so:

-- initial file name, will be replaced by the dialog
local file_name = ""
local create_file = editor.ui.show_dialog(editor.ui.dialog({
    title = "Create New File",
    content = editor.ui.horizontal({
        padding = editor.ui.PADDING.LARGE,
        spacing = editor.ui.SPACING.MEDIUM,
        children = {
            editor.ui.label({
                text = "New File Name",
                alignment = editor.ui.ALIGNMENT.CENTER
            }),
            editor.ui.string_field({
                grow = true,
                text = file_name,
                -- Typing callback:
                on_text_changed = function(new_text)
                    file_name = new_text
                end
            })
        }
    }),
    buttons = {
        editor.ui.dialog_button({ text = "Cancel", cancel = true, result = false }),
        editor.ui.dialog_button({ text = "Create File", default = true, result = true })
    }
}))
if create_file then
    print("create", file_name)
end

Here is a list of built-in input components:

• string_field, integer_field and number_field are variations of a single-line text field that allow editing strings, integeres, and numbers.
• select_box is used for selecting an option from predefined array of options with a dropdown control.
• check_box is a boolean input field with on_value_changed callback
• button with on_press callback that gets invoked on button press.
• external_file_field is a component intended for selecting a file path on the computer. It consists of a text field and a button that opens a file selection dialog.
• resource_field is a component intended for selecting a resource in the project.

All components except buttons allow setting an issue prop that displays the issue related to the component (either editor.ui.ISSUE_SEVERITY.ERROR or editor.ui.ISSUE_SEVERITY.WARNING), e.g.:

issue = {severity = editor.ui.ISSUE_SEVERITY.WARNING, message = "This value is deprecated"}

When issue is specified, it changes how the input component looks, and adds a tooltip with the issue message.

Here is a demo of all inputs with their issue variants:

Dialog-related components

To show a dialog, you need to use editor.ui.show_dialog function. It expects a dialog component that defines the main structure of Defold dialogs: title, header, content and buttons. Dialog component is a bit special: you can’t use it as a child of another component, because it represents a window, not a UI element. header and content are usual components though.

Dialog buttons are special too: they are created using dialog_button component. Unlike usual buttons, dialog buttons don’t have on_pressed callback. Instead, they define a result prop with a value that will be returned by the editor.ui.show_dialog function when the dialog is closed. Dialog buttons also define cancel and default boolean props: button with a cancel prop is triggered when user presses Escape or closes the dialog with the OS close button, and default button is triggered when the user presses Enter. A dialog button may have both cancel and default props set to true at the same time.

Utility components

Additionally, the editor defines some utility components:

• separator is a thin line used for delimiting blocks of content
• scroll is a wrapper component that shows scroll bars when the wrapped component does not fit in the assigned space

Reactivity

Since components are immutable userdatas, it’s impossible to change them after they are created. How to make the UI change over time then? The answer: reactive components.

In the most simple terms, a reactive component is a component with a Lua function that receives data (props) and returns view (another component). Reactive component function may use hooks: special functions in the editor.ui module that add reactive features to your components. By convention, all hooks have a name that starts with use_.

To create a reactive component, use editor.ui.component() function.

Let’s have a look at this example — a New File dialog that only allows creating a file if the entered file name is not empty:

-- 1. dialog is a reactive component
local dialog = editor.ui.component(function(props)
    -- 2. the component defines a local state (file name) that defaults to empty string
    local name, set_name = editor.ui.use_state("")

    return editor.ui.dialog({ 
        title = props.title,
        content = editor.ui.vertical({
            padding = editor.ui.PADDING.LARGE,
            children = { 
                editor.ui.string_field({ 
                    value = name,
                    -- 3. typing + Enter updates the local state
                    on_value_changed = set_name 
                }) 
            }
        }),
        buttons = {
            editor.ui.dialog_button({ 
                text = "Cancel", 
                cancel = true 
            }),
            editor.ui.dialog_button({ 
                text = "Create File",
                -- 4. creation is enabled when the name exists
                enabled = name ~= "",
                default = true,
                -- 5. result is the name
                result = name
            })
        }
    })
end)

-- 6. show_dialog will either return non-empty file name or nil on cancel
local file_name = editor.ui.show_dialog(dialog({ title = "New File Name" }))
if file_name then 
    print("create " .. file_name)
else
    print("cancelled")
end

When you execute a menu command that runs this code, the editor will show a dialog with disabled "Create File" dialog at the start, but, when you type a name and press Enter, it will become enabled:

So, how does it work? On the very first render, use_state hook creates a local state associated with the component and returns it with a setter for the state. When the setter function is invoked, it schedules a component re-render. On subsequent re-renders, the component function is invoked again, and use_state returns the updated state. New view component returned by the component function is then diffed against the old one, and the UI is updated where the changes were detected.

This reactive approach greatly simplifies building interactive UIs and keeping them in sync: instead of explicitly updating all affected UI components on user input, the view is defined as a pure function of the input (props and local state), and the editor handles all the updates itself.

Rules of reactivity

The editor expects reactive function components to behave nicely for them to work:

1. Component functions must be pure. There is no guarantee on when or how often the component function will be invoked. All side-effects should be outside of rendering, e.g. in callbacks
2. Props and local state must be immutable. Don’t mutate props. If your local state is a table, don’t mutate it in-place, but create a new one and pass it to the setter when the state needs to change.
3. Component functions must call the same hooks in the same order on every invocation. Don’t call hooks inside loops, in conditional blocks, after early returns etc. It is a best practice to call hooks in the beginning of the component function, before any other code.
4. Only call hooks from component functions. Hooks work in a context of a reactive component, so it’s only allowed to call them in the component function (or another function called directly by the component function).

Hooks

The editor defines 2 hooks: use_memo and use_state.

use_state

Local state can be created in 2 ways: with a default value or with an initializer function:

-- default value
local enabled, set_enabled = editor.ui.use_state(true)
-- initializer function + args
local id, set_id = editor.ui.use_state(string.lower, props.name)

Similarly, setter can be invoked with a new value or with an updater function:

-- updater function
local function increment_by(n, by)
    return n + by
end

local counter = editor.ui.component(function(props)
    local count, set_count = editor.ui.use_state(0)
    
    return editor.ui.horizontal({
        spacing = editor.ui.SPACING.SMALL,
        children = {
            editor.ui.label({
                text = tostring(count),
                alignment = editor.ui.ALIGNMENT.LEFT,
                grow = true
            }),
            editor.ui.text_button({
                text = "+1",
                on_pressed = function() set_count(increment_by, 1) end
            }),
            editor.ui.text_button({
                text = "+5",
                on_pressed = function() set_count(increment_by, 5) end
            })
        }
    })
end)

Finally, the state may be reset. The state is reset when any of the arguments to editor.ui.use_state() change, checked with ==. Because of this, you must not use literal tables or literal initializer functions as arguments to use_state hook: this will cause the state to reset on every re-render. To illustrate:

-- ❌ BAD: literal table initializer causes state reset on every re-render
local user, set_user = editor.ui.use_state({ first_name = props.first_name, last_name = props.last_name})

-- ✅ GOOD: use initializer function outside of component function to create table state
local function create_user(first_name, last_name) 
    return { first_name = first_name, last_name = last_name}
end
-- ...later, in component function:
local user, set_user = editor.ui.use_state(create_user, props.first_name, props.last_name)


-- ❌ BAD: literal initializer function causes state reset on every re-render
local id, set_id = editor.ui.use_state(function() return string.lower(props.name) end)

-- ✅ GOOD: use referenced initializer function to create the state
local id, set_id = editor.ui.use_state(string.lower, props.name)

use_memo

You can use use_memo hook to improve performance. It is common to perform some computations in the render functions, e.g. to check if the user input is valid. use_memo hook can be used in cases where checking if arguments to the computation function have changed is cheaper than invoking the computation function. The hook will call the computation function on first render, and will re-use the computed value on subsequent re-renders if all the args to use_memo are unchanged:

-- validation function outside of component function
local function validate_password(password)
    if #password < 8 then
        return false, "Password must be at least 8 characters long."
    elseif not password:match("%l") then
        return false, "Password must include at least one lowercase letter."
    elseif not password:match("%u") then
        return false, "Password must include at least one uppercase letter."
    elseif not password:match("%d") then
        return false, "Password must include at least one number."
    else
        return true, "Password is valid."
    end
end

-- ...later, in component function
local username, set_username = editor.ui.use_state('')
local password, set_password = editor.ui.use_state('')
local valid, message = editor.ui.use_memo(validate_password, password)

In this example, password validation will run on every password change (e.g. on typing in a password field), but not when the username is changed.

Another use-case for use_memo is creating callbacks that are then used on input components, or when a locally-created function is used as a prop value for another component — this prevents unnecessary re-renders.