How to compress big tables (Bypassing unrealiable remotes byte limit)

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This tutorial is about compressing tables and how buffers work in general.

Say you got a big tables that either too big for networking or you just wanna save space, luckily buffer can help us, this works for every luau table as we encode it to a JSON table.

Step 1: Encode your table first.

I’m gonna use my experience’s (Private since still W.I.P) badges tables that I got from roproxy due to how many badges it has, it exceeds the 900 byte limit when I try to send it to client ! And we’ll get a warning !

local HttpService = game:GetService("HttpService")

local ReplicatedStorage = game:GetService("ReplicatedStorage")

local Joueur = game:GetService("Players").PlayerAdded:Wait()

-- ATTENTION: MON TABLEAU  EST DEJA ON JSON DONC IL N'EST PAS NECESSAIRE DE LA FORMATTER MAIS DEPUIS LE VALEUR "data" EST IMPORTANTE NOUS NOUS FAIRE LE

-- WARNING: MY TABLE IS ALREADY ON JSON SO IT IS NOT NECESSARY TO FORMAT IT BUT SINCE THE “data” VALUE IS IMPORTANT WE WILL DO IT

local _mesBadges = HttpService:JSONDecode(HttpService:GetAsync("https://badges.roproxy.com/v1/universes/6206562942/badges")).data

ReplicatedStorage._envoyerLesInformations:FireClient(Joueur, _mesBadges)

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image1103×15 3.86 KB

We can now convert this table into JSON which essentially converts it to a string

ReplicatedStorage._envoyerLesInformations:FireClient(Joueur, HttpService:JSONEncode(_mesBadges))

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image1106×21 4.08 KB

But that makes it bigger! Which is why we’re gonna use buffer in the next step.

STEP 2: Compressing the table, utilizing buffer.

To make our table incredibly smaller and to bypass the byte limit (in my case scenario) we’ll convert the encoded table to a buffer since it is a string!

local _buffer = buffer.fromstring(HttpService:JSONEncode(_mesBadges))

print(_buffer)

ReplicatedStorage._envoyerLesInformations:FireClient(Joueur, _buffer)

It works, we successfully sent the information to the client, you’ll also notice that the IDs are different but do not fret, the content stays the same.

image

Our then-big table is now much smaller and can be used for various uses! But to make it a normal table again we’ll have to use it buffer.tostring(b:buffer)

STEP 3: Decoding.

Since we have compressed our table, it’s time to convert it back to how it was!

local ReplicatedStorage = game:GetService("ReplicatedStorage")

local HttpService = game:GetService("HttpService")

ReplicatedStorage._envoyerLesInformations.OnClientEvent:Connect(function(_lesInformations)
	local _buffer = buffer.tostring(_lesInformations)
	local _tableau = HttpService:JSONDecode(_buffer)
	print(_tableau)
end)

It works! Our table is now back to how it was!

image

We’ve successfully compressed and decompressed a big table to send to the client!

Server:

local HttpService = game:GetService("HttpService")

local ReplicatedStorage = game:GetService("ReplicatedStorage")

local Joueur = game:GetService("Players").PlayerAdded:Wait()

-- ATTENTION: MON TABLEAU  EST DEJA ON JSON DONC IL N'EST PAS NECESSAIRE DE LA FORMATTER MAIS DEPUIS LE VALEUR "data" EST IMPORTANTE NOUS NOUS FAIRE LE

-- WARNING: MY TABLE IS ALREADY ON JSON SO IT IS NOT NECESSARY TO FORMAT IT BUT SINCE THE “data” VALUE IS IMPORTANT WE WILL DO IT

local _mesBadges = HttpService:JSONDecode(HttpService:GetAsync("https://badges.roproxy.com/v1/universes/6206562942/badges")).data

local _buffer = buffer.fromstring(HttpService:JSONEncode(_mesBadges))

print(_buffer)

ReplicatedStorage._envoyerLesInformations:FireClient(Joueur, _buffer)

Client:

local ReplicatedStorage = game:GetService("ReplicatedStorage")

local HttpService = game:GetService("HttpService")

ReplicatedStorage._envoyerLesInformations.OnClientEvent:Connect(function(_lesInformations)
	local _buffer = buffer.tostring(_lesInformations)
	local _tableau = HttpService:JSONDecode(_buffer)
	print(_tableau)
end)

Thank you ! !

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