Entity:IsValid
Description
Returns whether the entity is a valid entity or not.
An entity is valid if:
- It is not a NULL entity
- It is not the worldspawn entity (game.GetWorld)
Instead of calling this method directly, it's a good idea to call the global IsValid instead, however if you're sure the variable you're using is always an entity object it's better to use this method
It will check whether the given variable contains an object (an Entity) or nothing at all for you. See examples.
NULL entities can still be assigned with key/value pairs, but they will be instantly negated. See example 3
This might be a cause for a lot of headache. Usually happening during networking etc., when completely valid entities suddenly become invalid on the client, but are never filtered with IsValid(). See GM:InitPostEntity for more details.
Returns
Example
Shows how to use the global IsValid function instead of using this method directly.
Example
print( LocalPlayer():IsValid() )
Output: Outputs 'true' to the console if the player is in-game.
Example
local newPlayer = net.ReadEntity() --server found a new player on the server and sent it to us after
print( "1/4" ) -- it determined it was valid (newPlayer is NULL in this realm)
if not isnumber(newPlayer.ImportantGameData) then --If it doesn't have a specific field, assign a value to it
print( "2/4" )
newPlayer.ImportantGameData = 42
end
print( "3/4" )
print( newPlayer.ImportantGameData * 69 ) --Attempting to do arithmetics on the new field
print( "4/4" )
Output: 1/4 ... 3/4
- A lua error telling us 'ImportantGameData' is a nil value and thus can't perform math on it
But this shouldn't be possible, because we just created a value there. No red flags are present up until this point; all code up until this will run fine. Make sure to add an IsValid() check when the seemingly impossible happens.
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