Magic Lantern Lua API Documentation

Startup

The scripting engine looks for scripts in ML/SCRIPTS. Scripts should end with .LUA. Any scripts found get "loaded" at startup by the scripting engine simply running them. Therefore the main body of the script should simply define the script's menu and behavior, not actually execute anything.

Menus

Scripts are not automatically visible in any specific menu. The script itself should define it's own menu (if a menu is needed). See: menu, calc.lua, copy2m.lua, menutest.lua, recdelay.lua, scrnshot.lua, sokoban.lua

State

The scripting engine will maintain your script's global state for as long as the camera is powered on. So any global variables you declare will persist until the camera is turned off.

Each script get's it's own lua state (virtual machine). If you would like scripts to share a state, have only one of the scripts in the ML/SCRIPTS folder, and have it call the other scripts with dofile() or require()

Tasks (threading)

"Preemptive" multithreading is not allowed within a single lua state, so only one thread of execution is allowed to be running in your script at a given time. Any attempts by other tasks to call functions in your scripts (e.g. via event handlers) will block until the current execution completes (or yields) or some timeout is reached (this is achieved by the scripting backend making use of semaphores). (Separate scripts may run at "the same time" since they have separate lua states)

The scripting engine will load and run scripts in a separate task created explicitly to load scripts. If a script blocks during loading, it will prevent other subsequent scripts from loading.

Different event and menu handlers get called from different ML or Canon tasks, and scripts may start their own tasks. A script may yield it's execution to some other task that is calling the script by calling task.yield. Execution is automatically yielded when the script returns from a call.

When writing a script, you should be mindful of the context (task) from which your script is running, and consider when it might be appropriate to start something in a separate task (to keep from blocking some ML or Canon task), or when to yield (to keep the script from blocking itself)

See: task

Library Scripts

You can write re-usable script code as a "library" by saving it as a .lua file in ML/SCRIPTS/LIB The require function will search for libraries (or "packages") here. As with regular scripts make sure to use valid 8.3 filenames. For a library called ML/SCRIPTS/LIB/MYLIB.LUA, load it by calling require("MYLIB"). For example, see config.lua and keys.lua, which are 'library' scripts included in this API.

Canon Properties

Canon firmware manages many settings via what it refers to as "properties". We can set handlers to recieve notificatons when properties change and we can send requests to change their values. One must be very careful when doing so, because Canon firmware persists this properties in NVRAM, and setting invalid values can 'soft-brick' the camera.

'Safe' getters and setters for some of the more common of these properties are available in sereveral of the modules, mainly camera and lens. You can register handlers for properties with the property module. Property handlers are run in a seprate task, so you can take as much time as you like without worrying about blocking Canon code, but doing so will block subsequent property handlers.

Errors

Unhandled errors are logged to the "console". You can turn it on from Debug > Modules debug > Show Console. This is also where you will see the output of the print() function. You can also implement your own error handling see editor.lua

Standard Libraries

All of the standard Lua libraries are available except os (replaced by dryos):

Modules

event Event Handlers.
battery Battery properties
camera Basic camera operations and properties
console Functions for writing data to the console
constants Constants
display Display and bmp drawing functions
dryos DryOS functions
global Global Functions
interval Intervalometer operations and properties
key Key functions
lens Lens functions
lv LiveView functions
menu Functions for interacting with the ML menu
movie Movie functions
property Canon Properties
task Task functions
config Functions for saving/loading config data
keys Helper for dealing with keypresses
logger Logging helper.

Examples

api_test.lua
calc.lua
editor.lua
copy2m.lua
menutest.lua
scrnshot.lua
hello.lua
config.lua
keys.lua
logger.lua
strict.lua
pong.lua
recdelay.lua
sokoban.lua
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