Pcall Errors - What are the options

Help and Feedback Scripting Support
#1

Hello All,

I’m still very new to creating Roblox games and dataStores. In dabbling with dataStores I have learned that the process of getting and sending data should be wrapped within a pcall function. The benefit, as I understand it, is that the pcall will print out an error message, if there is a problem.

What is the value of that error message?

Here’s the scenario I’m basing my question on: A previous player of my game logs in to play my game again. Maybe they have slow internet or there’s some type of disruption, so the player’s data doesn’t get fetched and downloaded to the player’s computer as it should. I’m guessing the pcall would send an error message to the server telling me about the situation?? How does the pcall immediately help the player who can’t download their data? Should the data Script containing the pcall have an if/then statement to attempt to download the data again, in the event an error is found?

What, if anything, should be added to the data Script to help out players who have an error downloading their game data?

#2

https://devforum.roblox.com/t/datastores-are-too-complex-for-roblox-developers/299070

#4

The problem is not downloading data to the client, if they can’t “download” their data they also won’t be able to play the game.

The pcall will warn if the server tries to access something for the roblox database and for some reason they can’t access it. That’s when you will get the pcall error which you have to handle. It has nothing to do with the client or their internet connection.

#5

The pcall (Or protective call) can return 2 values: A “success” & a “error message”

Both of these can return back as true or false, depending on what action you want the pcall to exactly do here

Say I have a custom function:

local MaxRetries = 5
local Retries = 0

local function ObtainData()

    if Retries > MaxRetries then
        print("Max retries reached, more info: ", errormessage)
        return
    end

    local Data
    local success, errormessage = pcall(function()
        Data = GetData:GetAsync(Player.UserId)
    end)

    if success and Data then 
        print("This user has data!")
    else
        ObtainData()
        Retries += 1
    end

    wait(10)
end

We’re attempting to obtain data from a specific player inside our pcall function here, and if they do then “success” would return back as true & “errormessage” would be returned back as false

But what if “errormessage” returned back as true? Sometimes the datastore may not find the data the moment the player joins :thinking:

Well we can use our else statement to call the function again, adding +1 to our Retries variable & if it exceeds that limit then we can return that function, and warning back the error message in the Output

(I’m not exact on this is how it works but this is my assumption)

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