I want to see the Dictionary used by Unity on the Inspector. But I don't know if it's possible or not, and I don't know how.

Please tell me how to see the Dictionary on the inspector. Or you can tell me about other data structures similar to Dictionary in Unity.

CodePudding user response：

As suggested by @Daniel, odds are you can get away with using a Serializable attribute on a class with your desired data structure, then store it in a List.

However, if you insist on creating a Seraliable dictionary, you could use SerializableDictionary<TKey, TValue> as follows:

[System.Serializable]
public class SerializableDictionary<TKey, TValue> : Dictionary<TKey, TValue>, ISerializationCallbackReceiver
{
    [SerializeField]
    private List<TKey> keys = new();

    [SerializeField]
    private List<TValue> values = new();

    public void OnBeforeSerialize()
    {
        keys.Clear();
        values.Clear();

        foreach (var pair in this)
        {
            keys.Add(pair.Key);
            values.Add(pair.Value);
        }
    }

    public void OnAfterDeserialize()
    {
        Clear();

        if (keys.Count != values.Count)
            throw new System.Exception(
                $"There are {keys.Count} keys and {values.Count} values after deserialization. Make sure that both key and value types are serializable.");

        for (var i = 0; i < keys.Count; i  )
            Add(keys[i], values[i]);
    }
}

Then implement a SerializableDictionary in your code as follows:

[SerializeField]
private SerializableDictionary<string, int> _exampleSerializableDictionary = new()
{
    {"A", 10},
    {"B", 20},
    {"C", 30}
};

CodePudding user response：

Short answer is no, you can't serialize them.

But you have some options, I'll provide you with one.

Suppose you want to create a Dictionary<string, int>. You can create a class/struct that holds this information:

using System;

[Serializable]
public class StringIntPair {
    public string key;
    public int value;
}

And then, in your code, you can create a List<StringIntPair>, that will be visible on your inspector. This way you can set the values you want in the inspector.

Lastly, you can create a Dictionary<string, int> and populate it in Awake / Start method as you wish:

using System;

[Serializable]
public class YourClass : MonoBehaviour {
    
    public List<StringIntPair> exposedDictionary; 
    Dictionary<string, int> hiddenDictionary;

    void Awake(){
        foreach(StringIntPair pair in exposedDictionary)
            hiddenDictionary[pair.key] = pair.value;
    }    
}

And then you can use hiddenDictionary in the code as you wish.