# Creating custom functions

Once you’re comfortable enough in the system to make your own functions and/or change the current functions, here are some things to keep in mind.

You should always assume an item does not have a widget version of itself. If you need access to the widget of an item, you can use GetWidgetForItem. Remember to check if the widget is valid.
Widgets also can’t be transported through a network, so if multiplayer is important to you, your server functions can’t rely on data from widgets.

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# Finding Items

Finding an item is a very common scenario when you start making your own functions.

The container's TileMap combined with an item's UniqueID is the most reliable way of finding items.

The component includes a function to get an item at item at a specific index of a container called GetItemAtSpecificIndex.

• The UniqueID is the most reliable method of finding a very specific item, container or item driver, other than a direct reference to the item, container or item driver, but even then a direct reference might get outdated if the player moves the item or modifies it in some way. The UniqueID is only updated for containers and items if they are moved to a new component. You can update a outdated item struct by calling UpdateItemStruct

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# Network optimizations

It is recommended, where ever possible, to use the item or container UniqueID instead of the struct in your RPC calls, and then have your server use the UniqueID to figure out which struct to use.

The only downside is that it is not possible to verify if the client has illegally modified it's data, and it's very difficult to verify that the data inside the item/container are synced. It is up to you whether that is a big enough problem to do this. Some anti-cheat methods already do a very good job at preventing clients from modifying the games data with external tools.
If you need to validate the data, you can have the server function still accept the full item/container struct, validate the data, then only pass the UniqueID to the client.

We covered that UniqueID's scale extremely well on another page, but to give you an idea of how well it scales, here's an example