Tables comes out empty for some reason

[zinc hawk]

Hello yall, im trying to make when a player joins the server, the server will get their userid and then insert the userid as a key (therefore the playerID is the key), and through that you will be able to access the Stats value that are assigned to the UserId of the player on PlayerData,

Summary I have ConstantsVariable of Data on my module, the gamecore fetches the table values on the module and assigned to the player userid on a table

but for some reason, the table always comes out empty, I tried everything and for some reason it doesnt work, it doesnt let me store the playername outside of the PlayerAdded:Connect section

[swift gust]

you need to assign player data inside the PlayerAdded event using their userid as the key; if you try storing or accessing it outside that event, the table will be empty because the player hasn’t joined yet.

[zinc hawk]

ohh i see, so how can i make the data on the table able to be used through the entire script ?, do I need to make my entire script inside PlayerAdded ?, or is there something else I can do ?

[swift gust]

store player data in a global or module-level table inside PlayerAdded, then access that table anywhere after the player joins—no need to put all code inside PlayerAdded. just make sure you only use the data once it’s set.

[errant magnet]

why aren't you using datastore?

[errant magnet]

your PlayerData table on the server, and doing PlayerData.hi=5 or PlayerData.Id=? is foolish since this table will be shared among all players and you're going to get really weird results. ideally you want to be disambiguating with PlayerData[player.UserId] = {hi=5; id=player.UserId} then later you can access it with PlayerData[player.UserId]

that's probably what you intended to do

[zinc hawk]

Ohhhh got it, I will try using that then

[cedar oar]

** You are now Level 3! **

[zinc hawk]

No no, the reason why im not using data store is basically for testing, and also I just want to store the player data on the server temporarily, where its easier to manage and access, the “hi” was just a test and to show what was going on, I intended to save the player data on data store later on(when they leave or in increaments of regular saving every 5 minutes), the table on the server is temporary, think it as RAM memory that later will be stored into a SSD

[errant magnet]

i think you mis-read, i told you how to fix that part. was just curious why no datastore

do bear in mind you've got that table as a local variable so unless you pass it out of that script somehow you wont be able to access it anywhere else, use a modulescript like beefiboi said or put it in _G

[zinc hawk]

Oh my bad, its late at night so my brain power is really on the floor rj

[errant magnet]

or, turn it into a bunch of instancevalues like numbervalue and boolvalue and just read from them when you're ready to save. this is a very stable and reliable technique and also replicates the data to the client without any extra work.

[zinc hawk]

I think I will try using a module script, i actually tried doing that, but it was putting my script on infinite yield, but that was a mistake of mine from earlier, but how would you guys recommend me sending the player.Id from playeradded to modular script?, i tried using playeradded on a module script and kt didnt worked

[errant magnet]

the module would be a blank table, just return {} so it's a container for a shared table

then you just do datatable=require(sharedtabledata) datatable[player.userid] etc

[zinc hawk]

That is true, i was actually doing that before but I stopped cuz I was afraid it would become too inefficient for some dumb reason

[errant magnet]

nah not inefficient. it's extremely stable, reliable, very beginner friendly, and has the convenience of automatically replicating. it is not laggy or inefficient.

[zinc hawk]

Damn, thats actually simpler than i thought 😭, i really need to practice more coding

[errant magnet]

practice makes perfect

[zinc hawk]

I will consider using that, i will prob just make a for loop later to take out everything from my Constant table and put then create a player folder

[errant magnet]

the only caveat to the instancevalue method is that sometimes you want things not to replicate, so you have to set up a system where some things go into the player, and some things go into some folder in serverstorage

or you might want more complex data like a table, which you can absolutely still do with instances it's just a bit harder since you need to watch for datafolder.childadded/childremoving

like inventory for example

you might even combine the instancevalues with a server-sided table. there are no incorrect answers

[zinc hawk]

Hmmmm an inventory system like that aint bad, i will see what i do tmrw morning

Thank you so much by the way

And also i heard somebody saying instancevalues are a bit bad?, they told me to use leaderstats or attributes for some reason

[errant magnet]

yea they don't know what they're talking about

roblox can handle hundreds of thousands to millions of instances no problem.

[zinc hawk]

Ohh there is no worries then

[errant magnet]

just dont do game:getdescendants() if you've got that many

[zinc hawk]

Get:descrndants? thats a new one

Isnt getchildren

The same?

Or is there a different property?

[zinc hawk]

Alright guys, I followed what yall said, and it worked, thank you so much once again, just one thing, I used task.clone(), in order to copy the data on constants, since it was making a new array and putting inside that array the values for some reason, and I also saw online that doing that with tables makes the variable into a pointer to the table, so the values would be changed in both tables, which was not ideal, but still, it all worked out in the end