It is possible to do conditional serialization?

Unity Engine
1

I wondering if is possible to do something like this.

[Serializable]
public class AnimationData
{
    /// some data
}


public class AnimatorDataController
{
    public int size;

    if(size>0)
    {
                //serialize an array
                public AnimationData[] animationData = new AnimationData[] { };             
    }
    else
    {
               //serialize one element only
               public AnimationData animationData = new AnimationData();
    }
 
}

is It possible? How to do it?
Thank you so much!!

2

No, you couldn’t change the declaring type of a member like that. You could mimic what Unity does though, serialize the array and expose properties that act the way you want. Like Renderer.material and Renderer.materials, where material is just a property that returns the first element of the materials array.

1 Like
3

Ok, thank you so much for your help!!

4

Note that it’s perfectly ok to store an array of one element, too. Which is basically the same as conditionally serializing “one or an array”.

2 Likes
5

Yes, i know it… but i want to have the opportunity to choose it from editor… it would be great!!

6

Hey!! Here i found somthimg very interesting!! Maybe is possible to do what i Want!! XD

1 Like
7

Using a custom inspector would allow you to selectively make it appear as a single property instead of an array with a length of one, definitely. That won’t change how the code works under the hood though.

2 Likes
8

You are right!!