Accessing a Class using only a string

Question

Lets say I have a base-class called Spells, inside of it are many sub-classes called HolySmite and DivineBuff

For Example:

 Spells.HolySmite.manaCost = 3;
 Spells.DivineBuff.manaCost = 5;

To cast these spells, I have to run like 30 lines of code checking various things. But right now, I am having to manually type out those 30 lines of code multiplied by 30 spells is over 300 lines of code! And expanding!!!

Is there any way to reference to a sub-class using only a string which shares the same name?
Here is what I would like to do:

 string spellName = "HolySmite";
 
 Spells.[spellName].manaCost = 0;
 //At runtime it would access the sub-class "HolySmite"
 //Spells.HolySmite.manaCost = 0

Caveat, A kind fellow programmer named Hellium gave the wonderful suggestion to use a Dictionary inside of the Spell base class, but it negates the benefits of using inheritance because it prevents me accessing the sub-class properties.

Answer 1

Best Answer

Answer by Captain_Pineapple · Mar 03 at 11:36 PM

i don't really see a good way to do what you want to do here. Especially since it does not really solve the issue right?

If i correctly understand your question then (assuming your SpellBase class has 10 parameters) you do not want to write those 10 lines of value assignements per spell that is derived from your base right?

have you considered to make your base spellclass a scriptable object? This way you can create instances of derived classes as assets and fill in the values in the inspector. This should get rid of the need to write the definitions out again.

Other then that you could tag your spell classes as [Serializable] and save them to a json. Then you can modify that json and load all values from there on startup.

In general there is no real good solution to this. If you want to have a spell, you need to assign all its values. If you have many values and many spells then this has to be done. For some things there are no good shortcuts.

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karma0413 · Mar 04 at 05:03 AM 0

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Thanks for taking the time to read my question. I have given up for now on trying to make my code less-cumbersome for now.

In truth, the run-time speed is still pretty fast because I have designed in such a way that excessive code doesn't run unless it needs to.

Answer 2

Answer by keroltarr · Mar 03 at 08:41 PM

what about using: FindObjectsOfType();

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Captain_Pineapple · Mar 03 at 11:30 PM 0

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why? how does that relate to the question in any way?

spooneystone · Mar 04 at 12:59 AM 0

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FindObjectOfType can be used like

 FindObjectofType<HolySmite>;

and this will find the class of that name

Captain_Pineapple spooneystone · Mar 04 at 08:56 AM 0

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yes but how does that relate to the question? The question was not "how to find an object of X in my scene?"

keroltarr Captain_Pineapple · Mar 04 at 04:44 PM 0

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I understand I didn't answer the specific question. when I read a question I try to understand the use-case. When I have a problem I am solving I often find out the solution is simpler than I originally imagined. In this case I wanted to suggest a simpler solution that was perhaps overlooked.

Answer 3

Answer by Cakebox · Mar 04 at 04:08 PM

I would use a Dictionary for this. You can still access the sub-class:

 Dictionary<string, Spells> spellsDictionary;
 
 // Initialise the dictionary and fill it with your spells, then at some point:
 
 var foundSpell = spellsDictionary["HolySmite"];
 if (foundSpell is HolySmite x)
 {
     x.subclassSpecificStuffHere;
 }

Personally, instead of using a string for the key, I would create a simple enum. Less worrying about typos!

 public enum SpellName
 {
     HolySmite,
     DivineBuff,
     SpectralSausage,
     Etc
 };

 // Declaring your dictionary now looks like this:
 Dictionary<SpellName, Spells> spellsDictionary;
     
 // And accessing it looks like this:   
     var foundSpell = spellsDictionary[SpellName.HolySmite];

Hope that helps.

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Accessing a Class using only a string

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