Using variable to access a script variable with GetComponent

Unity Engine
1

Hi Guys,
given the below script

string var = “variable1”
gameObject.GetComponent().var
is there and easy way to use a string var to access a variable into a given script?

Of course this is a simple case but I have my string variable changing based on the variable i need to access.

Thanks to anyone who can figure this out!

2

GetComponent does offer access via string. So GetComponent(var). You will have to cast the returned component → as MyTypeHere

From the Docs:
Returns the component with name type if the game object has one attached, null if it doesn’t.

It is better to use GetComponent with a Type instead of a string for performance reasons. Sometimes you might not be able to get to the type however, for example when trying to access a C# script from Javascript. In that case you can simply access the component by name instead of type.

3

Thanks for your help but i’m not very clear yet how it works, see this example below:

for (int i = 1; i == 5; ++i)
{
string pre = (“previousAction” + i);
if (GameObject.Find(obj).GetComponent().pre = “”)
{
//do something
}
}

What I want to do is accessing the different components “previousAction1”, “previousAction2”, etc…into a script without repeating the if 5 times, is it possible?

Thanks again

4

What I think you really want is a dictionary. You make the key a string, then you get a value corresponding to that string. Effectively it has you using a string you set at runtime as the name of a variable, even though that isn’t really what is happening.

You could also use a list or array, and then access elements of the collection by index number. It is an int instead of a string, but in your example you’re just differentiating the names by a number anyways.

5 
for (int i = 1; i <=  5; i++)
{
   string pre = "previousAction" + i.ToString();
   if (GameObject.Find(obj).GetComponent(pre) != null)
   {
       //do something
    }
}
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