GameObject.Find an inactive object by a string

Unity Engine
1

Hey guys. I have a small problem.
I need to GameObject.Find an inactive object, its name is stored in a string InRoom, (that I change with PlayerPrefs when player is touching a checkpoint in a new room) (Edit: I mean it will Find an object with the name that is written in the string)
So I used GameObject.Find(InRoom) to SetActive it, but it was inactive at the start and I had an exception.
Is there a way to access an inactive GameObject, finding it with a string, not using it in Inspector? And I can’t activate it before the game starts, (or I will have many bugs and my player will fall in a random direction)
Thank you!

2

There are a lot of ways to find arbitrary GameObjects, and GameObject.Find is basically the worst way. It’s slow, unreliable, and as you’ve discovered, can’t find inactive GameObjects. If you accidentally share a name between two objects that’ll break it too, even if one of them is in a completely different place (such as the UI).

For your situation, I think you should have a manager object where you assign links to every object that may be activated with this system. It’d be much faster and more reliable. It would look something like:

public GameObject[] activatableObjects;
private Dictionary<string, GameObject> activationLookup;

void Awake() {
activationLookup = new Dictionary<string, GameObject>();
for (int g=0;g<activatableObjects.Length;g++) {
activationLookup.Add(activatableObjects[g].name, activatableObjects[g]);
}
}

public GameObject Find(string findName) {
if (activationLookup.ContainsKey(findName)) return activationLookup[findName];
else return null;
}

You could put this manager on a singleton to make it as easily accessible as GameObject.Find is.

2 Likes
3

Saving a link to it in the Inspector is the best, simplest way. But since you said you didn’t want to to that, you could give it an empty always-active parent. Once you find the parent, get the child with transform.Find(“theName”). That works in inactive objects, so will find the inactive child. Or just use transform.GetChild(0).

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4

I’d do what both the above have suggested, but another option is to leave the GameObject itself enabled, but disable all the components and children. Find would work then.

1 Like
5

I tried transform.Find, but what do I use to enable the object if it returns Transform?

6

You can always get the GameObject via yourTransform.gameObject