I still don't understand tables...

[Sarcas]

I've spent hours reading at lua.org, lua-users.org and numerous other sites, looked at a lot of examples here at the forum, but somehow I still don't understand tables. Perhaps it has to do with the fact that I learned myself programming some 40+ years ago when i was a kid. BASIC and Pascal and dialects. I understand tables are not the arrays I used to know, but somehow I just can't grasp it.

I want to make a table ('myTable'). The index has to be a Domoticz device ID (DzDeviceID), the trigger. When that device triggers, I need to look up a premade api/json so I can open it (onActionUrl), and more info, like the name of the trigger (triggerName).

So, in my fantasy LaLaLua-language I need to do something like

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myTable[DzDeviceID].onActionUrl = myPremadeUrl
myTable[DzDeviceID].triggerName= thetriggername

etc
Obviously, it doesn't work.
I tried variations of declaring the array, like:

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local myTable= { 
            onActionUrl= {},
            triggerName= {}
        }

But I have really no clue what I am doing.

Do I need to use

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insert.table

? I tried to use tables as unordered sets, because the order is irrelevant. The example doesn't use the

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insert.table

way.

I am so confuuuused!

S.

[jvdz]

This is an explanation about LUA Arrays/Tables in general:
Basically you need to define a array (table) for each "level".
so taking it one step at a time to be able to do this:

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myTable[DzDeviceID].onActionUrl = myPremadeUrl

you need to define myTable as array:

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myTable = {}

This allows you to do:

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myTable["xyz"] = "test"    -- use this format when using a variable that contains "xyz"
-- or 
myTable.xyz = "test"      -- this needs to be an hardcoded xyz

In your case eaxch entry in the myTable array needs to be an Array of its own so you define it as such

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DzDeviceID = "xyz"
myTable[DzDeviceID] = {}

After that you can set it in either of these 2 ways:

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myTable[DzDeviceID]["onActionUrl"] = "testURL"
-- or 
myTable[DzDeviceID].onActionUrl = "testURL"

Any clearer this way?
Jos

[Sarcas]

Thanks,

It helped me out a bit. Your examples & trial and error Not defining the arrays was one of the problems.