How to select an object by script

I am a beginner in Unity and I am currently making a simple game. I have a problem where I need to select an object automatically by script so I can click outside of it without clicking on it in the screen.

What I want to do is when I click the object another object or panel will show and it will be automatically be selected by script so I can click outside the panel and it will close or will setActive to false. I tried the Select() and it is not working for me. The two objects are originally an Image but I added a Button component so it can be selectable.

This is the script for the object that will show the Panel:

using UnityEngine;
using UnityEngine.UI;
using UnityEngine.EventSystems;

public class ShowPhone : MonoBehaviour, ISelectHandler
{
    [SerializeField] Button phonePanel;

    public void OnSelect(BaseEventData eventData)
    {
        phonePanel.gameObject.SetActive(true);

    }
}

This is the script for the panel where I want to click outside to close it:

using UnityEngine;
using UnityEngine.UI;
using UnityEngine.EventSystems;

public class HidePhoen : MonoBehaviour, IDeselectHandler
{
    public Button phone;

    private void OnEnable()
    {
        phone.Select();
    }

    public void OnDeselect(BaseEventData data)
    {
        Debug.Log("The Object will be setActive false when clicked outside the object");
    }
}

CodePudding user response：

You would use EventSystem.SetSelectedGameObject

EventSystem.current.SetSelectedGameObject(yourTargetGameObject);

Note though: Your panel would automatically be closed even if clicking any UI element within it (like e.g. InputField etc)

You can checkout the TMP_Dropdown source code and the way they implemented a "UI Blocker" which basically is an overlay over the entire screen except the drop-down popup and closes the pop-up when clicked on.

you could either replicate this or have a simpler version with a fully transparent background button behind your panel with onClick for closing the panel.

As alternative you could check RectTransformUtility.RectangleContainsScreenPoint