Proxy Tables

When iterating over a table returned from a select few properties, you must use ipairs or pairs rather than foreach, next, or whatever else exists. The "tables" are actually userdata containing C++ pointers.

Why

The Lua language is fairly simple. It does not have an iterator metamethod like it does for some other operations. Because of this, __pairs and __ipairs are pseudo-metamethods that exist for proxy tables. It is a tradeoff of performance for being a little less flexible. However, since Lua's foreach is being depreciated, there is almost no reason to not use ipairs or pairs.

List of proxy tables

This is an exhaustive list of everything that returns proxy tables. If you think that this is out of date or incorrect, then the file names in the source code will tell you if you are correct. If the file name ends with "Proxy.cpp", then it is proxy table.

Context.documents --read-only, index by integer and string
Element.attributes --read-only, index by string
Element.child_nodes --read-only, index by integer
Element.style --read & write, index by string
Event.parameters --read-only, index by string
rocket.contexts --read-only, index by integer and string
--From RocketControls
ElementFormControlSelect.options --[[read only, index by integer
      each index item is a table with two named values, {"element"=Element,"value"=string} ]]

If you try to use ipairs on a proxy table that is only indexed by string, then you will iterate over no items. If you use pairs on a proxy table that is only indexed by integer, then you will iterate over all of the items, just like you would expect.