• 🚀 Quick start
• ✨ Features
• 🖥️ Setup Instructions
  • Install Lua
  • Install Visual Studio Code and Lua Debug
• 🐞 Debugging in VS Code
• 📁 Project Structure Example
• 🧪 Simple Example
• 🛠️ Plans / Ideas

Minimal implementation of the mw object for testing and debugging Wikipedia Lua modules outside of MediaWiki.

⚠️ This is a lightweight mock. It is not complete or production-safe — intended for development and debugging only.

First add a module to your repo:

# add to your repo
git submodule add https://github.com/Eccenux/wiki-lua-mw-mock.git mw
# commit the change
git commit -am "Add 'mw' submodule"

There are many other ways. Like e.g.: download zip of this repo an unzip to "mw" subdirectory, download once and create a symlink (Unix) or junction (Windows).

Quick example:

-- include this library
local mw = require("mw/mw")

-- replace require to support namespace removal
local originalRequire = require
function require(moduleName)
	moduleName = moduleName:gsub("Modu[^:]+:", "")
	return originalRequire(moduleName)
end

-- Load a copy of a module
-- Note that this loads "Piechart.lua" file (a local file).
local p = require('Module:Piechart')
local json_data = '[{"label": "k: $v", "value": 33.1}, {"label": "m: $v", "value": -1}]'
local html = p.renderPie(json_data)
mw.logObject(html)

• Implements a minimal mw table with placeholders for:
  • mw.log, mw.logObject
  • mw.text
  • mw.ustring (proxy to string)
• Useful for writing and testing Lua modules locally before deploying to Wikipedia or Wikidata.
• Pure Lua — no dependencies.

After this lua and luac should be available in your terminal.

Install Lua on Windows using Scoop.

If you don’t have Scoop yet:

Set-ExecutionPolicy -ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned -Scope CurrentUser
Invoke-RestMethod -Uri https://get.scoop.sh | Invoke-Expression

Then install Lua:

scoop install lua

Install Homebrew.

Then install Lua:

brew update
brew install lua

Install Visual Studio Code.

Install the Lua Debug extension by actboy168:

Extension ID: actboy168.lua-debug

1. Create a .vscode/launch.json:

   {
   	"version": "0.2.0",
   	"configurations": [
   		{
   			"type": "lua",
   			"request": "launch",
   			"name": "Launch Lua script",
   			"program": "${workspaceFolder}/_test.lua"
   		}
   	]
   }

2. Create a test file, e.g. _test.lua:

   mw = require("mw") -- your mock
   
   mw.log("Hello from mock mw!")
   mw.logObject({ foo = "bar", nested = { a = 1 } })

3. Set breakpoints, hit F5 to debug.

lua-wiki/
│
├── mw/
│   ├── mw.lua             -- mw entry point
│   ├── text.lua           -- mw.text mock
│   ├── ustring.lua        -- mw.ustring proxy
|   ...
├── _test.lua              -- your dev entry point

-- _test.lua
require("mw")

local data = {
	title = "Example",
	ns = 0,
	isTalk = false,
}

mw.logObject(data)

• Add more realistic implementations (e.g. Unicode support in mw.ustring).
• Other mocks/implementations?
• Optional strict mode to catch unexpected fields.