Fixing bad datastore?

Help and Feedback Scripting Support
1

Hi, I own a popular game, and like the title says, I handled my datastore pretty poorly…

I have a separate datastore for each thing (coins, gametime, jail, etc…), which I have to use a get request every time a player joins for each one.

Example (some sample code directly from my game):

Coins = CoinsDataStore:GetAsync(Player.UserId) or 0
GameTime = TimeDataStore:GetAsync(Player.UserId) or 0

This obviously creates issues.

Instead of doing this, I want to fix this issue and set a single datastore where all this data is found, and I would only have to get it once every time a player joins.

I know how to do this, but because of the way I stored data (by userid), I’m unsure how I would convert everyone’s data into the new datastore while completely eliminating the need for the old one.

Is this not possible? Would I have to check for old data (if the new datastore doesn’t work), then save it to the new datastore? Or is there a simple one and done trick that I’m missing?

4 Likes
2

Yeah.

  1. Check if the new player has a new datastore already when they join
  2. If not, check if they have the old ones
  3. If they have an old one, move the data to a new one

Hide all this logic in some module, and save version numbers in your new datastore to make this kind of thing easier in the future :slight_smile:

2 Likes
3

I was afraid of this. More work for me, yay!!!

Thanks for the reply :smile:

1 Like
4

Can you tell me what you mean by saving version numbers? What would be the purpose of this?

5

Like in your new datastore, you’ll have player data:

{
  coins: 100,
  deaths: 20,
  items: {"diamond_sword", "wooden_shield"}
}

I’m saying that you should also include a special version field:

{
  VERSION: 1, -- could also be a string like "1.0.0" or whatever you want
  coins: 100,
  deaths: 20,
  items: {"diamond_sword", "wooden_shield"}
}

Then say in the future you decided that every item should also include a “condition” or something, so you want to change the structure to be:

{
  VERSION: 2, -- we update the version
  coins: 100,
  deaths: 20,
  items: {
    {name: "diamond_sword", condition: 100}, 
    {name: "wooden_shield", condition: 70}
}

Keep a bunch of modules whos only purpose is to upgrade a player’s save data from one version to the next (and no farther).

So for example say you’re on VERSION: 5 at some point in the future.

A player joins who’s on VERSION: 1.

So you run four data conversions:

  • From v1 to v2, which tweaks the items table to include conditions
  • From v2 to v3, which adds a pets list
  • From v3 to v4, which reverts the first change and removes the conditions from the items table
  • From v4 to v5, which does something else

Then you save the new, updated data with VERSION: 5 for that player and they’re up to date.

1 Like