mw.loadData() allows for optimizing the loading Lua tables by requiring
only one parse and lookup. However it's often easier for people to
write/maintain bulk data in JSON rather than Lua tables.
mw.loadJsonData() has roughly the same characteristics as mw.loadData()
and it can be used on JSON content model pages in any namespace.
As noted on the linked bug report, it's possible to already implement
this by writing a wrapper Lua module that loads and parses the JSON
content. But that requires a dummy module for each JSON page, which is
just annoying and inconvenient.
Test cases are copied from the mw.loadData() ones, with a few omissions
for syntax not supported in JSON (e.g. NaN, infinity, etc.).
Bug: T217500
Change-Id: I1b35ad27a37b94064707bb8c9b7108c7078ed4d1
For the most part, it is a good idea to avoid global variables and use
`local` variables instead. Quoting from the ScopeTutorial[1], "The
general rule is to always use local variables, unless it's necessary for
every part of your program to be able to access the variable (which is
very rare)."
Wikimedia module authors have written "Module:No globals", which errors
on the use of any global variable. On the English Wikipedia, this is
used on 32% of pages (18 million). Wikidata[2] indicates that it's been
copied to 334 other wikis.
Lua itself distributes an extra named "strict.lua"[3], which is what
this is based off of. Similar to bit32.lua, this is a pure-Lua library
that can be imported/enabled with `require( "strict" )` at the top of a
module.
The two changes I made from Lua's strict is to exempt the `arg` key,
which is used internally by Scribunto, and remove `what()`, since we
don't enable access to `debug.getinfo()` for security reasons.
[1] https://lua-users.org/wiki/ScopeTutorial
[2] https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q16748603
[3] http://www.lua.org/extras/5.1/strict.lua
Bug: T209310
Change-Id: I46ee6f630ac6b26c68c31becd1f3b9d961bcab29
