Is JSON encoding more useful for saving data?
I've been hearing from some people that JSON is better, but I'd like to hear other people's opinions and maybe some advantages or disadvantages.
For example, should I use this code:
(mock-up)
local dss = game:GetService("DataStoreService")
local http = game:GetService("HttpService")
local store = dss:GetDataStore("whatever")
local data = http:JSONDecode(store)
--load data and do whatever
local encodedData = http:JSONEncode(newData)
store:SetAsync(tableOfData, encodedData)
(may not be correct as I did it loosely in the way another user did)
or the common way:
local dss = game:GetService("DataStoreService")
local store = dss:GetDataStore("whatever")
local data = store:GetAsync(tableOfData)
--load data
store:SetAsync(tableOfData, newData)
1 answer
Data structures (such as tables) are automatically encoded to JSON upon set request to ROBLOX's data store service. For instance, there is no difference between...
DataStore:SetAsync(key, table)
and
DataStore:SetAsync(key, JSONEncode(table))
Encoding a table with JSON for the purpose of saving is redundant.
However
Although you don't need to encode a table in JSON to save it, you may want to. There is a character limit to the JSON-formatted data that you can save under one key (I think it's 2^16 characters or something like that). So, perhaps one might want to encode a table before saving it to check the length of the encoded data to see if it will save successfully. For example...
local HttpService = game:GetService("HttpService")
local table = {}
local JSON_table = HttpService:JSONEncode(table)
-- check size limit of the data being saved
if (#JSON_table >= 2^16) then
-- don't save
else
-- save
end
This is just one out of other potential uses of encoding data in JSON before saving it. I hope this helped. If you have any questions, just let me know.
Disclaimer:
This is based off of my old knowledge of DataStoreService. Although I don't think any of this has changed, I will update this answer accordingly if I find out any new information.
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