Inheritance And Editor Targets

Question

The core of the problem is that I need an explicit reference to access variables off of the base class. This isn't an issue if I know exactly what class my custom editor is going to be used on, I'll just cast the target property inherited from Editor - no biggie.

Issues arise when my custom editor is used on derived classes. Consider the following cases.

 public class A
 {
     public int IntegerVariable;
 }
 public class B : A
 {
 
 }

We have two classes, Class A and Class B. The custom inspector is written for Class A, but since Class B inherits Class A we also use it for Class B and any other class that may inherit Class A. So imagine this scenario: We add Class B to a gameobject and use the custom editor tailored for Class A. Now we need an explicit reference to Class A so the editor is able to access IntegerVariable. You'd usually do something along the lines of

 private Target { get { return (A)this.target; } }

but since 'this' is now B, the above code will not work. How do you get a reference to Class A?

Answer 1

I think you can get reference to A with your code. As casting B as A is valid.

Just to clarify with the following classes defined.

A.cs

 using UnityEngine;
 
 public class A : MonoBehaviour {
     public int IntegerVariable;
 }

B.cs

 using UnityEngine;
 
 public class B : A {
     
 }

AEditor.cs

 using UnityEngine;
 using UnityEditor;
 
 [CustomEditor(typeof(A), true)]
 public class AEditor : Editor {
 
     public override void OnInspectorGUI ()
     {
         A a = (this.target as A);
         EditorGUILayout.LabelField ("Value: " + a.IntegerVariable);
     }
 }

Now. With this setup, if you wanted you wanted to make the class B inspector to duplicate A. Consider using this tag in A:

 [CustomEditor(typeof(A), true)]

This will make your Class B have the inspector of EditorA.

If you wanted to extend and add more functionality to the inspector in B. Then extend EditorA to reuse the code and base.OnInspectorGUI()

 using UnityEngine;
 using System.Collections;
 using UnityEditor;
 
 [CustomEditor(typeof(B))]
 public class BEditor : AEditor 
 {
     public override void OnInspectorGUI ()
     {
         base.OnInspectorGUI ();
     }
 }

Inheritance And Editor Targets

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