Lua is now available as a templating language on Wikia as we've backported the Scribunto extension to our version of MediaWiki. This helps us provide users with the ability to create more maintainable templates, and improve the performance of some of our slowest pages.

Lua is a dramatically different coding experience than basic wikitext templates, and resembles a more 'traditional' programming syntax (Lua being based off of C) and thus offers two key advantages. First and foremost is that logical functionality – if, else, and while statements along with arrays and variable definition for instance - is built in to the Lua language, making the implementation of basic logic much easier in Lua than the hacky way MediaWiki adds it through extra add-ons and parser functions. Secondly, because Lua is streamlined for logical operations, it is much more technically efficient.

Enabling & Support

Effective July 30, 2014, Lua can be enabled upon administrator request. When enabled, the general standard Lua libraries along with the specialized Scribunto libraries will be available. Also, InfoboxBuilder will be automatically bundled in the installation.

In addition to the documentation linked below, we have a forum board set up here on DEV Wiki to ask questions and get help.

Examples

Got a cool example of how Lua is being used on your wikia? Willing to allow other users on Wikia to tweak your design to meet their wikia's needs? Add a link to the Lua module with a quick description of what the module does!

Documentation

• Converting wikitext templates
• InfoboxBuilder, an in-house Wikia tool for building infoboxes.
• Reference manual, a comprehensive documentation page of Lua code
• Scribunto libraries
• Standard Lua libraries

See also

• Lua on Wikipedia
• Lua modules on Wikipedia
• Lua-based templates on Wikipedia
• Scribunto extension page