I understand how HttpService works from the Roblox side of things and how to go about setting that up, but when it comes to the other side of things (what the HttpService is sending/getting from) I am a total noob so I’m hoping someone can point me in the right direction.
Basically what I’m looking to do is the following:
-Send Player data to a place where it can be stored and accessed with a user’s ID
-Be able to update a specific value for the UserID key (ie. update the ‘Gold’ value stored for a user without changing the ‘XP’ value stored for that user)
-Have the external storage (program?) manipulate the data as a whole and return the manipulated data when requested (ie. have the service be able to return who has the highest ‘Gold’ value or return the number of players who have at least a certain amount of ‘XP’ value)
So, the first two things in the list are able to be accomplished using DataStores which is what I would normally be used to using - however being able to have the storage side of things manipulate and return manipulated data is very crucial for my needs.
I’ve done a bit of reasearch my self on this, but I’m still quite confused on a lot of things - It seems like a service like Microsoft Azure or Amazon S3 is what I need but really I have no idea if I need something more specific or if what I am looking to do is standard practice for these sort of services?
I’m also not sure what sort of program I would be using to write the ‘serverside’ code (the code that would determine who has the highest gold value etc.) I’m sure I could learn the basic of a new language to code in something as simple as what I need, but if LUA is an option for something like this that would make things easier too.
I understand if my questions don’t have simple answers, so any sort of resource I could look into to gain a better understanding on these subjects would be very helpful!
I’m sorry if this doesn’t help as I am a complete noob when it comes to the same things but I think a web-server with MySQL will help you. Again, I have only touched MySQL but it is a tool used to store and manipulate data. You can set it up to a web-server and just send/receive HttpService requests to the web-server.
You’d need to know languages like JavaScript to execute this. You’d need to use some services like MySQL or MongoDB, and you need a good host for your website, although some cost.
From Roblox, you’d have to encode your data into JSON and send that data over to your web server via a POST request. It’ll have to JSON decoded to js and stored using the aforementioned services. When you’d want ro receives the data, you need to do long-polling, which is where you wait until the server puts text on the webpage you sent the request to
I found this service: https://www.webscript.io/ which seems like it would be easiest for me to get into without having to learn a new langauge, though I’m not sure what sort of functionality I’d be missing out on compared to something like MySQL. MySQL seems to be the more professional option, but I think my needs are fairly simple so if you think the service I linked would be sufficient for what I’m looking to do I would probably prefer it since it is in Lua. The data I’m looking to store is not super cricitcal or anything and I’m only looking to store ~4 days worth of data at a time so long term storage and backups are not really neccessary.
Thanks for taking the time to reply, sorry if what I said above this is a little vague - I’m really just looking for your opinion on if you think the service I linked is comparable to doing it proper with MySQL etc.?
EDIT: Apparently webscript.io has shut down (even though the site doesn’t look it) whoops. I’m still curious if there is a similar type of service though and whether or not it is worth it to use such a service vs. a ‘proper’ sql database
There are many reasons to use an external database. One reason is so you can access your data from other sources. If you wanted say a Discord bot that gave you a special role based on something in game, you could do that. If you wanted a website where players could track their progress, you would need the external server.
As for services - I’d stick with just learning how to do a web app from whatever language you want. Services like Microsoft Azure are for hosting your web app, which you may need to look into.