Is there a way to get the full path of a nested index in a metatable?

[MaxthedaydreamerXMx (maxzieblox)]

I want to make it so that if I index Example.Settings.Volume on a metatable, I can like get the full path?

I’m planning to make a system where if you index a table like shown above, the server can return a custom value (or return with the value from that index on the server-side?)

Metatables by default, when you index, you often have to use a proxy table because if I tried to access Example.Settings.Volume it would oly see Example.Settings, and if I tried to use a proxy metatable, it would never know until it finished indexing.

Any help?

[Yarik_superpro (The_GrandOptimizer)]

Who are you hiding your table from? Yourself? Is that the Minecraft hidden base in singleplayer syndrome creeping into Roblox code?

Just… don’t. You can do it via recursion or a loop, but why would you want to?

local Player = {Apple = true}
Player.__index = Player
local Admin = setmetatable({__index = Player},Player)
local SuperAdmin = setmetatable({__index = Admin},Admin)

local function create_class_super_admin():()
	local self = {}
	
	
	return setmetatable(self,SuperAdmin)
end


local class = create_class_super_admin()
print(class.Apple)

See? class.Apple behind the scenes does ~4 lookups on the VM level. That’s essentially x4 slower than direct access.

You really don’t want that; you want full access.

Hence, paradigms like ECS are superior. Look at Entity Component System implementations in Roblox:

local Players = game:GetService("Players")

local Plr_Health_Component:{[Player]:number} = {}

Players.PlayerAdded:Connect(function(Plr):()
	Plr_Health_Component[Plr] = 100
	Plr.CharacterAdded:Connect(function():()
		Plr_Health_Component[Plr] = 100
	end)
	Plr.CharacterRemoving:Connect(function():()
		Plr_Health_Component[Plr] = 0
	end)
end)
Players.PlayerRemoving:Connect(function(Plr):()
	Plr_Health_Component[Plr] = nil
end)

Back to your “full path” thing… dead simple:

local class = create_class_super_admin()

print(getmetatable(class))

The real solution? Build your system without metatables. No lag, no hidden overhead, pure logic you can actually see.

Just don’t be scared of yourself - stop hiding logic from yourself.

[xc02xx (x02)]

You can do so with a custom __index metamethod i.e

Settings.__index = function(self, index)
    return otherTable[index] or Settings[index]
end

[MaxthedaydreamerXMx (maxzieblox)]

I’m tryna hide the table from hackers
I’ll try looking into ECS. Thanks though

(I severely overcomplicated something by accident it seems)