unity-serializable-collections

Serializable versions of generic C# collections (Stack, Queue, Dictionary, HashSet, and more).

Usage

Due to limitations in Unity's serialization system, you will need to create non-generic subclasses of these collections for every generic type argument you need to use them with. For example, if you wanted to use a SerializableQueue with int values, you'd create a C# file somewhere in your project that looked like this:

// This attribute tells Unity to try and serialize this class,
// if you don't include it, the collection won't work properly.
[System.Serializable]
public class IntegerQueue : SerializableQueue<int>
{
    // Default constructor
    public IntegerQueue () : base() { }

    // Another possible constructor
    // (you don't have to define these, but if you want to use a
    // particular constructor, you'll need to include it here)
    public IntegerQueue ( int count ) : base( count) { }
}

Then you'd be ready to use the IntegerQueue collection in your scripts. For example:

using UnityEngine;

public class SomeBehaviour : MonoBehaviour
{
    // You'll be able to set some values in the inspector,
    // and everything will persist between Play/Stop.
    public IntegerQueue myQueue = new IntegerQueue( 10 );

    // You don't have to explicitly initialize a collection, if you'd prefer,
    // you can let Unity's serialization system initialize an empty one for you.
    public IntegerQueue anEmptyQueue;

    void Update ()
    {
        if ( myQueue.Count > 0 )
        {
             Debug.Log( myQueue.Dequeu() );
        }
    }
}

Wherever possible, collections have been implemented to be compatible with their .NET counterparts (either by extending .NET collections or implementing corresponding .NET interfaces), however in some cases this was not possible (ie for HashSets, where the .NET implementation has no corresponding interface and extending HashSet introduced uncircumventable serialization errors). In these cases, the serializable collection does its best to reproduce the .NET collection's members and behaviour.