Best way to find items in a table?

Help and Feedback Scripting Support
1

I am making an inventory system and the only way I can think of doing it is comparing two tables and if they have the same item I will clone the item. Is this the best way to compare the tables or am I going about this wrong?

Inventory.ItemData = {
[1] = {Name = "Axe", Skin = "000",},
}

and another table called

Inventory.PlayerInventory = {}

here is how i compare

for index, value in pairs(Inventory.PlayerInventory) do

   for index1, value2 in pairs(Inventory.ItemData) do
	
	if value == Inventory.ItemData[index1].Name then
		local cloneitem = game.ReplicatedStorage.Items[Inventory.ItemData[index1].Name]
		cloneitem:Clone()
		cloneitem.Parent = workspace
	end
    end
end
2 Likes
2

I am not sure what you mean, could you explain a bit further?

3

Try comparing the values of ‘value and value2’ in your if statement, rather the original list itself.

If you need help later ill be around, but i have to get some things done.

And unless your player inventory is filled at game time, it won’t compare true if it’s empty.

4

But why are you doing this? If you explained what you are going to achieve maybe we would be able to come up with a more efficient solution.

5

As the op stated, He’s trying to see if the the players inventory contains an item.

6

But it depends, anyways, my idea is to store additional information in each item whether it is the type of item that has to be cloned or whatever the OP wants to do with it. Then the complexity of the algorithm goes from O(n^2) to O(n) (a lot faster but takes more memory), because you won’t have to make two loops, just one over the inventory.

7

I assume that what you’re trying to do is to look at all the items in the PlayerInventory table and then find their data in the ItemData table. If so, then what I would do is to change your ItemData from an array of item data to a dictionary of item data.

Inventory.ItemData = {
Sword1 = {Name = "Sword1", Skin = "000"},
--- etc.
}

Now, all you have to do to find the data for a Player’s Inventory item is to index the dictionary.
for index, value in pairs(Inventory.PlayerInventory) do

for index, value in pairs(Inventory.PlayerInventory) do
    if not Inventory.ItemData[value] == nil then -- make sure the item is in the ItemData table
        local cloneitem = game.ReplicatedStorage.Items[Inventory.ItemData[value].Name]
		cloneitem:Clone()
		cloneitem.Parent = workspace
    end
end
1 Like
8

In addition to what @ExtremeBuilder15 said, you can store the same item data in multiple tables if you want to look it up in multiple ways:

local allItemData = {
    {Name = ..., Damage = ...}
    etc
} 
local itemsByName = {}
for _, item in pairs(allItemData) do
    itemsByName[item.Name] = item
end
9

for i, value in pairs(Inventory.PlayerInventory) do

for j, value2 in pairs(Inventory.ItemData) do

if value == value2 then
	-- player has item.
end
end

end

I can’t format from my phone, sorry.