I hear people talking about serializing variables among things in their unity projects and quite don't understand it. I see them using

[SerializeField] 

and don't know why or what it does.

CodePudding user response：

I looked up the definition of data serialization: Serialization is the process of converting the state information of an object into a form that can be stored or transmitted. During serialization, objects write their current state to temporary or persistent storage. Later, the object can be recreated by reading or deserializing the state of the object from the store. Objects are created as the program runs, and then reclaimed when unreachable, with a short lifespan. But what if we want to store the contents of the object permanently? Convert it into a sequence of bytes and save it on a storage medium. Then serialization is required. [SerializeField] is to force Unity to serialize a private field. This is an internal Unity serialization function. Sometimes we need to Serialize a private or protected attribute. In this case, the [SerializeField] attribute can be used. The above is some information I found, I hope it is correct and can bring you some help

CodePudding user response：

Say, you have a field _speed and you want to set it using inspector. It means we want it to be serialized - stored somewhere in a human-readable and flexible format(e.g. xml), not directly in code. So when you edit fields in inspector, you edit the serialized data. During compilation, it's being deserialized and assigned to a field. This is how serialization/desearialization works. It is used to store non-static or just big amounts of data. In case of Unity it is used to show you everything in inspector. Transform has position and scale variables serialized and you can edit them.

In Unity there are two common ways to make fields assignable in inspector: using public fields or using [SerializedField] attribute for private ones.

Making fields public just to edit them with inspector is bad practice. If you can edit field in inspector, it means every other component can too, which is insecure. There is no good architecture that allows such things. If you want other components to edit the field, make it a property or make a set method. If you just need to assign fields by hand, don't use public fields. Avoid them.

When you use the [SerializeField] attribute, you create a private field that is accessible to this component only and you can assign it in inspector at the same time. If you need other components to read it, you can make a public property without set (public float Speed => _speed;).

This all is not an obligatory usage. Just good practice.