CODEWITHSUNDEEP
unity-game-engineserialization
Gabriel Minosso
Gabriel Minosso

Reputation: 59

Unable to serialize a class in the inspector

I know that are a lot of similar questions around there, yet I failed to find the solution to my problem.

I have this simple class:

using System;

[Serializable]
public class CountryInternalData
{
    public string title;
    public string textID;
    public int confederationID;
    public int numericID;
}

And I'm trying to use an array list of it on another class:

using System.Collections.Generic;
using UnityEngine;
using System;

[Serializable]
public class ConfederationAffiliatedCountriesLink : MonoBehaviour
{
    public List<CountryInternalData>[] affiliatedCountriesByConfederation;

    //SOME OTHER CODE (unrelated to the question IMO)

    void TestAffiliatedCountries()
    {
        var confederations = contentManager.loadedConfederations;
        var arraySize = confederations.Count;

        affiliatedCountriesByConfederation = new List<CountryInternalData>[arraySize];
        //LOOPS that fill the array list (unrelated to the question IMO)
    }
}

Despite using the [Serializable] attribute, the affiliatedCountriesByConfederation doesn't appear in the inspector:

enter image description here

I'm under the impression that this might be something basic, but I'm facing a hard time to figure out what I'm missing here. My goal is to build a simple save and load system to create data to my game, so I need to check if the things that I saved are being loaded properly, that's why see the data in the inspector would be very useful for me...

Upvotes: 0

Views: 448

Answers (1)

derHugo
derHugo

Reputation: 90659

Nested arrays/lists are not serialized. See Script Serialization

Note: Unity does not support serialization of multilevel types (multidimensional arrays, jagged arrays, and nested container types). If you want to serialize these, you have two options: wrap the nested type in a class or struct, or use serialization callbacks ISerializationCallbackReceiver to perform custom serialization. For more information, see documentation on Custom Serialization.

So you could use a wrapper type like

[Serializable]
public class CountryInternalData
{
    public string title;
    public string textID;
    public int confederationID;
    public int numericID;
}

[Serializable]
public class CountryInternalDataCollection
{
    public List<CountryInternalData> data = new List<CountryInternalData>();

    // Indexer for still accessing elements directly via index 
    // => without the need for writing .data everytime
    public CountryInternalData this[int index]
    {
        get => data[index];
        set => data[index] = value;
    }

    public void Add(CountryInternalData item)
    {
        data.Add(item);
    }

    // And evtl other methods if you need them 
}

and then use

public CountryInternalDataCollection[] affiliatedCountriesByConfederation;

Upvotes: 2

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