Introduction to resources

Servers run on a collection of resources. A resource is a collection of files - such as client scripts, server scripts, and streaming assets - that can be started, stopped and restarted at any time.

Resource directories

In the server, resources are loaded from a folder called resources/ in the server data directory. Any folder in the resources/ folder is parsed as a resource, except folders between [brackets] which are categories, which can contain multiple resource folders.

Here’s an example:

server
└── resources
    └── [category]
        └── resource-1
        └── resource-2
        └── resource-3

This tree shows that the folder [category] will contain resource-1 - resource-2 - resource-3 which can all be started directly in the server.cfg file with the following:

start [category]

Please note that you are free to name the folder and the resources as you wish.

Each resource folder also has to contain a resource manifest reference called fxmanifest.lua (or previously, __resource.lua) to be correctly parsed as a resource.

See this example directory tree:

server
└── resources
    ├── [category]
    │   ├── [another]
    │   │   └── thing
    │   │       └── fxmanifest.lua
    │   └── resource-1
    │       └── fxmanifest.lua
    └── main
        └── fxmanifest.lua

In this tree, the following resources exist:

• main
• resource-1
• thing

Please note that a warning will be shown:

This message can be ignored if you intentionally not have any resource manifest. Otherwise, you need to verify that the fxmanifest.lua is correctly named. Let’s learn more about this file.

The resource manifest

Every resource is required to contain a resource manifest by the name of fxmanifest.lua defining what files/scripts are used by the resource. A quick example manifest follows:

-- Resource Metadata
fx_version 'cerulean'
games { 'rdr3', 'gta5' }

author 'John Doe <j.doe@example.com>'
description 'Example resource'
version '1.0.0'

-- What to run
client_scripts {
    'client.lua',
    'client_two.lua'
}
server_script 'server.lua'

-- Extra data can be used as well
my_data 'one' { two = 42 }
my_data 'three' { four = 69 }

-- due to Lua syntax, the following works too:
my_data('nine')({ninety = "nein"})

-- metadata keys can be arbitrary
pizza_topping 'pineapple'

See the resource manifest reference for more details.

Note that old resources can have a different name following __resource.lua. You can replace the name with fxmanifest.lua and modify the structure inside for compatibility. Otherwise you will have a warning in the server console that this file is deprecated.

Standard resources

After you’ve installed your server, you’ll notice you already have quite a few resources. These are the standard resources that FiveM ships. It’s advised to not change them unless you know what you’re doing. Many of these resources provide useful functionality to your server.

More information about the standard resources can be found in the resource catalog.