Deep Copy Prefab

Unity Engine
1

For some reason I can’t post questions on the answers section, so I’ll try here.

I’m trying to copy a component that has a reference to a Prefab.
When copying that component, it actually stores a reference to the reference for the prefab.
So when I destroy the original component, the prefab reference is gone from the copied component.

Is there a way around this?

My Copy Component method goes like this:

    public static Component CopyComponent(Component original, GameObject destination)
    {
        System.Type type = original.GetType();
        Component copy = destination.AddComponent (type);
        // Copied fields can be restricted with BindingFlags
        System.Reflection.FieldInfo[] fields = type.GetFields();
        foreach (System.Reflection.FieldInfo field in fields)
        {
            if (field.GetType() == typeof(GameObject)) {
                field.SetValue (copy, field.GetValue(original));
            } else {
                field.SetValue(copy, field.GetValue(original));
            }
        }
        return copy;
    }
2

If you need this in the editor only, you could use SerializedObject and CopyFromSerializedProperty.

See the CopyInternal method for an example, where an entire SerializedObject is copied.

3

Thanks for the reply.

Yeah the thing is I really need this in runtime, I should have specified that.

4

Have you tried caching the reference, maybe setting it as null (on the source to be copied) before copying the component, and then re-assigning it to the new copy?

5

If anyone cares, I ended up loading all the items into a Dictionary in the beginning of the game, and in the Add Component method, I check for a game object, and if it’s true, I just grab the item from the Dictionary.