dynamic buttons

[hulksmash]

I am trying to create a bunch of buttons in a FOR loop. What is the best practice to go about doing this? I need to be able to change the button text outside the loop in another function.

	
for p=1,4,1 do
	myButton[p] = Chain( wm:CreateControl("button"..p, ss, CT_BUTTON) )
			:SetDimensions(50,50)
			:SetText("button"..p)
			:SetAnchor(TOPLEFT, ss, TOPLEFT, 0,(p*50)-50)
			:SetFont("ZoFontAlert")
		.__END
end
myButton[p]:SetText("newname")

[Seerah]

What you're doing is fine. Are you having issues?

[hulksmash]

Well going further I have several objects I create in the loop along with the button. I wanted to keep them together in a structure of some sort. For example:

local node = {}

for p=1,4,1 do
	node[p].button = Chain( wm:CreateControl("button"..p, ss, CT_BUTTON) )
			:SetDimensions(50,50)
			:SetText("button"..p)
			:SetAnchor(TOPLEFT, ss, TOPLEFT, 0,(p*50)-50)
			:SetFont("ZoFontAlert")
		.__END
end

function update()
   node[1].button:SetText("newname")
end

Which would not work so I tried something like this but then I cant reference the button text anymore.

local node = {}

for p=1,4,1 do
        thisNode = node[p]
	thisNode.button = Chain( wm:CreateControl("button"..p, ss, CT_BUTTON) )
			:SetDimensions(50,50)
			:SetText("button"..p)
			:SetAnchor(TOPLEFT, ss, TOPLEFT, 0,(p*50)-50)
			:SetFont("ZoFontAlert")
		.__END
end

function update()
   thisNode = node[1]
   thisNode.button:SetText("newname")
end

[Kentarii]

Originally Posted by hulksmash Which would not work so I tried something like this but then I cant reference the button text anymore.

Let me guess.. you get a nil error?

If you want to use tables, you need to declare them properly, here's two approaches:

local node = {} -- define node tables
 
for p=1,4,1 do
  node[p] = {} -- define inner table
  node[p].button = YourButtonFunction(..)
end
 
for i=5,8,1 do
  node[i] = {
    button = YourButtonFunction(..)
  }
end
 
for j=1,8,1 do
  d(node[j])
end

(Disclaimer, code is untested and might contain errors)
http://www.lua.org/pil/2.5.html

[Seerah]

Add local in front of each thisnode assignment.

[hulksmash]

Thanks that really pointed me in the right direction for what I needed