Number keys get turned into strings when passed through remote events?

[Chiseled_Cheese]

I am working on a modulescript (dictionary specific) replicator for my game.

When I pass a table through a remote event, such as the one in this pseudo code:

local members = {
    58293471828 --[[random player's userid]] = "owner" --[[player's role]]
}

FireClients(members)

The number based userid key seems to be turned into a string when received by the client. Here is an example of this happening.

Server Side

Client Side

Does anybody know why this is happening? I am assuming that this is due to some sort of array/dictionary messup in the interpreter, but I want to be sure. If there is a way to fix this, or a way to take advantage of this issue without running tostring() on a player’s userid every time it is used, please let me know.

(Extra Note: Yes, I know I could cache player userids in some sort of table to retrieve their string form to bypass the constant “tostring” usage, but that would create dependencies in my modules that I do not want).

[frogweezer (wisp)]

Why do keys have to be strings when transferring data between server and client?

Since the inception of remote events/functions, yes. The problem is as stated above, remotes only accept tables if they have non-mixed indices and are either a dictionary (string keys only) or an array (numerical indices, but must start at 1, and increment without holes, so i.e. 1,2,3,4,5,6,…). The table you’re trying to push through has numerical indices but does not start at 1 and has holes (i.e. 1 between 82347291) and therefore cannot be accepted. The reason for these constraints i…

[RoBoPoJu]

You can convert the dictionary to a pair of arrays and then convert that pair back to a dictionary on the other side of the network.

local function convertDictionaryToTwoArrays<TKey, TValue>(dictionary: {[TKey]: TValue}): ({TKey}, {TValue})
	local keyArray: {TKey} = {}
	local valueArray: {TValue} = {}
	for key: TKey, value: TValue in dictionary do
		table.insert(keyArray, key)
		table.insert(valueArray, value)
	end
	return keyArray, valueArray
end

local function convertTwoArraysToDictionary<TKey, TValue>(keyArray: {TKey}, valueArray: {TValue}): {[TKey]: TValue}
	if #valueArray ~= #keyArray then
		error("Array lengths don't match.")
	end
	local dictionary: {[TKey]: TValue} = {}
	for arrayIndex: number, dictionaryKey: TKey in keyArray do
		dictionary[dictionaryKey] = valueArray[arrayIndex]
	end
	return dictionary
end

This way, the data type of the keys of the dictionary can be any datatype that can be sent via a remote event. So this would work even for a dictionary whose keys are Instances.

[Chiseled_Cheese]

Thanks both of you. I wish I could mark your posts as solutions if I could. Though I might have to mess around with the code you sent me a little, bit, I appreciate the help here.

@RoBoPoJu @frogweezer