ox_inventory stashes: RegisterStash, openInventory and job stashes

You need a place to store things: a police evidence locker, a personal wardrobe, a safe in a house. With ox_inventory this is a stash: a named inventory with its own slots and weight limit, stored in the database. This article covers registering a stash on the server, opening it from the client, making it personal, restricting it to a job, and attaching it to an ox_target zone.

#Register the stash on the server

A stash must exist on the server before anyone opens it. Register it once, when your resource starts:

-- server.lua
exports.ox_inventory:RegisterStash('police_evidence', 'Evidence locker', 100, 500000, false)

The arguments, in order:

Only the first four are required. The contents are saved by ox_inventory, so they survive restarts of your script and of the server.

Warning: the id is the identity of the stash. If you change 'police_evidence' to another string later, the old contents stay in the database under the old id and the new stash starts empty.

#Open it from the client

On the client, open the stash with the export and the same id:

-- client.lua
exports.ox_inventory:openInventory('stash', 'police_evidence')

The server checks groups and coords when the request arrives, so the client cannot skip them. If the stash id was never registered, nothing opens.

You can also open a stash for a player from the server, for example from a command or an event you already validated:

exports.ox_inventory:forceOpenInventory(source, 'stash', 'police_evidence')

#Personal stashes: owner = true

For a wardrobe or a locker where every player has their own content, use owner = true:

exports.ox_inventory:RegisterStash('personal_locker', 'Personal locker', 50, 100000, true)

The stash id is the same for everybody, but ox_inventory attaches the player identifier to it, so each player gets a separate inventory. On ESX that is the license or identifier of the character, on QBox and QBCore the citizen id.

You can also pass a fixed owner, which is useful for a house where only the owner and people you decide on may see it:

local identifier = 'char1:abc123'
exports.ox_inventory:RegisterStash('house_' .. identifier, 'House storage', 80, 200000, identifier)

When the owner is a string, anyone opening that stash is attached to that owner, so the access check should happen in your own server code before you open it.

#Job stashes: groups

groups is a table of job names, each with the minimum grade:

exports.ox_inventory:RegisterStash(
    'police_armory',
    'Police armory',
    80,
    300000,
    false,
    { police = 0, sheriff = 2 }
)

A player with the police job at grade 0 or higher can open it, and a sheriff only from grade 2. Everyone else is refused by the server. This works with ESX jobs, QBCore jobs and QBox jobs, because ox_inventory reads them from the framework.

To also require that the player stands at the stash, pass coords as the last argument:

exports.ox_inventory:RegisterStash(
    'police_armory', 'Police armory', 80, 300000, false,
    { police = 0 }, vec3(452.1, -980.2, 30.7)
)

#Open it with ox_target

A stash is usually opened from a spot in the world. With ox_target, add a zone that calls the export:

exports.ox_target:addSphereZone({
    coords = vec3(452.1, -980.2, 30.7),
    radius = 1.0,
    options = {
        {
            name = 'open_police_armory',
            icon = 'fa-solid fa-box-archive',
            label = 'Open armory',
            groups = { police = 0 },
            onSelect = function()
                exports.ox_inventory:openInventory('stash', 'police_armory')
            end,
        },
    },
})

The groups here only hides the option, which is a convenience. The real check is the one on RegisterStash. For zones in general, see adding an ox_target zone.

#Stashes defined in a file

If you do not want to write code, ox_inventory reads stashes from data/stashes.lua. Each entry has a name, a label, slots, weight, optional owner, groups, and a location. Look at the example entries in that file on your version, copy one, and restart ox_inventory. Use code registration when a stash is created by another resource, such as a housing script.

Tip: to check whether a stash works, open it, put an item in, restart your resource, and open it again. If the item is still there, the id matches and the contents are saved.

#Checklist