How can I get a reference to the maintable from within its metatable

[remcodesremcodes (Yix)]

im not good with metatables, so is there any way to get a reference to the main table within the metatable?

basically I want to store methods for the main table inside the metatable.
I want to do this because if I set the methods directly with function table:method, iterating over it returns the function and I don’t want that.

the function that creates the table:

function createVault(player: Player): Vault
    if not next(saveStructure) then warn(errorPrefix.." Save structure has not been set! Use DataVault:SetSaveStructure() to create one.") return nil end
    if table.find(vaults, player) then return 1 end
    vaults[player] = saveStructure
    local vault = vaults[player]
    pcall(function()
        vault = hs:JSONDecode(dss:GetDataStore("Data"):GetAsync("Player_"..player.UserId))
    end)
    setmetatable(vault, {
        --where the methods are to be stored
    })
end

notes for this code:
this code is for a datastore module project im working on
Vault is a custom type annotation
vaults is a dictionary where index is a player object and value is the vault
if the player has a vault already, return 1 as a function detects if it is 1 and handles it
saveStructure is a table

[GTX_3]

function createVault(player: Player): Vault
    if not next(saveStructure) then 
        warn(errorPrefix.." Save structure has not been set! Use DataVault:SetSaveStructure() to create one.") 
        return nil 
    end
    if table.find(vaults, player) then 
        return 1 
    end
    vaults[player] = saveStructure
    local vault = vaults[player]
    pcall(function()
        vault = hs:JSONDecode(dss:GetDataStore("Data"):GetAsync("Player_"..player.UserId))
    end)
    
    local metatable = {
        -- Sample method
        sampleMethod = function(self)
            print("This is a method for ", self)
        end,
        -- Add more methods here

        -- The __index metamethod
        __index = function(tbl, key)
            -- If key is not found in main table, look it up in metatable
            return metatable[key]
        end
    }
    
    setmetatable(vault, metatable)
    return vault
end

Here’s how you can use the sampleMethod :

local vaultInstance = createVault(somePlayer)
vaultInstance:sampleMethod()  -- prints "This is a method for {contents of vaultInstance}"

[remcodesremcodes (Yix)]

a little change, the .__index should be outside the metatable since the metatable would be undefined when returning

other than that, it works! thank you