Lua Module Development (Recommended)

Module development with Lua is very easy and the recommended way to make modules for Twillow. However, if you can't make a module with Lua for whatever reason, you can use Python instead!

Making a module

First, you need to define the class which you want to make the module in. Here you can (optionally) define a name for the module. If you do not provide a name, the file name will be used.

MagicBallModule = {
    ['name'] = '8ball' -- This is used as the command prefix
}

Now, we can make the new function for the module that will be called when the module is loaded. This will also contain all our module's subfunctions. And then we also need a module function that returns our module!

function MagicBallModule.new(o) 
    local inst = {}

    return inst
end

-- Tell Twillow where the module is. Should return your module class
function module()
    return MagicBallModule
end

Making commands

Now, in our module, we can make functions that will be used as commands. If you do not want a function to be recognized as a command, add an underscore to the beginning.

Our function can take any amount of arguments, or none at all. Our function should return a string that is in TwiML format.

Let's start off by making a simple 8ball command in our magic 8ball module

First, we will need to add the required imports to the beginning of our lua script.

local math = require("math")
local os = require("os")

Also add our choices for the 8ball to pick from. You can add/remove/modify the choices as you wish at any time.

-- Choices
local magic8ball = {'yes', 'no', 'maybe', 'probably', 'probably not', 'most definitely', 'yes, definitely', 'definitely not', 'no doubt', 'i doubt it'}

Finally, let's make our command! Our command will not need to accept any arguments, as it doesn't actually care what the user wants to ask the 8ball.

-- `8ball` command
function inst:magicball(arg1, arg2, arg3)
    math.randomseed(os.time())
    return '<Response><Message>🎱 ' .. magic8ball[math.random(#magic8ball)] .. '</Message></Response>'
end

Here is our function. It makes a random seed using the current time and then returns a response of a random choice from the magic8ball list.

Add the plugin into your config.toml and run Twillow to see your plugin in action! Make sure you run 8ball 8ball and not just 8ball for now!

Root command

If we do not have multiple commands, or we want a command that will run when there is not a valid subcommand specified, we can simply make a function in our module named _all to handle this.

    -- Root command (the function that will handle any call where a subcommand is missing, should return a function; Optional)
    function inst:_all()
        return inst.magicball
    end

That's it! Now we have made our first module in Lua!

Limitations

For now, there is no standardized library to use for TwiML like in Python, so you will need to manually send the TwiML.

Finished Module

Check modules/misc/8ball.lua for the latest version.

-- Magic 8ball module -- 
local math = require("math")
local os = require("os")

-- Choices
local magic8ball = {'yes', 'no', 'maybe', 'probably', 'probably not', 'most definitely', 'yes, definitely', 'definitely not', 'no doubt', 'i doubt it'}

-- Module
MagicBallModule = {
    ['name'] = '8ball' -- This is used as the command prefix
}

function MagicBallModule.new(o) 
    local inst = {}

    -- `8ball` command
    function inst:magicball(arg1, arg2, arg3)
        math.randomseed(os.time())
        return '<Response><Message>🎱 ' .. magic8ball[math.random(#magic8ball)] .. '</Message></Response>'
    end

    -- Root command (the function that will handle any call where a subcommand is missing, should return a function; Optional)
    function inst:_all()
        return inst.magicball
    end

    return inst
end

-- Tell Twillow where the module is. Should return your module class
function module()
    return MagicBallModule
end