Storing the TARDIS
Querying the TARDIS from a TardisManager each time even though the id doesn’t change is highly irresponsible.
Therefore, if the TARDIS you query doesn’t change (as in, you’re asking for the TARDIS with the same id) it’s better to cache it in a field.
⚠️Warning: never cache the component. Component getters are extremely fast and have practically no overhead.
But caching the TARDIS in a field only works if the code that reads, caches and uses the cached TARDIS is executed purely server-side.
The reason for that is when the condition is met, the server will send a full data packet, forcing the client to overwrite it’s entry.
Storing a TARDIS instance on client-side might lead to a memory leak, unexpected behaviour and a de-sync.
To fix this, in 1.0.5+ TardisRefs were introduced.
TardisRef are like linkables, but can’t store the data on their own. They have a #get method to get the TARDIS instance.
To check if a ref is linked you can use the #isLinked method.
Each time you ask a ref for a TARDIS instance, it checks if:
- the cached tardis instance is null
- the cached tardis is outdated
- the ref has a non-null id to look up
If those conditions are met then the ref will ask an appropriate TardisManager for the TARDIS instance.
For convenience, linkable block entities have a #isLinked method themselves, which also check if the ref instance is null.