Add categories to GDScript exported variables #10303

bojidar-bg · 2017-08-12T13:07:48Z

Closes #4378 via the 4th proposal, as it is easiest to implement
Supports:

category xyz:
    export var x = 2
category "xyz/test":
    export var y = 5
category(test):
    export var z = 6
category("test/xyz"):
    export var w = 8
export var a = 7 # Would appear before the categorised variables because of limitations
func _ready():
    print(x + y + z + w)

Does not yet support:

category a:
    category b:
        export var c = 2
# can be faked using `category "a/b":`

But, most of all, needs some extra testing, as I might have broken things.

Geequlim · 2017-08-13T08:21:30Z

New keyword

neikeq · 2017-08-13T08:27:05Z

I seriously consider GDScript would benefit from attributes to avoid so many new keywords.

EDIT:

For example, if #9469 was merged, it would simply be:

@category xyz
export var x = 2
@category xyz/test
export var y = 5

No modifications to the language, you would just check the field attributes. Less complexity. Even export could be an attribute if necessary.

Closes godotengine#4378 via the 4th proposal, as it is easiest to implement

juan-garcia-m · 2017-08-23T18:11:52Z

@neikeq exactly, that could had been a good use for annotations.

@bojidar-bg this is cool, thanks!

kubecz3k · 2017-11-06T18:22:18Z

Well we don't have attributes in gdscript, but this pr (ability to create exported var categories) is still cool.
@reduz could you give us a hint on how you see this?

akien-mga · 2017-11-16T23:48:39Z

Needs rebase after #12969, sorry :D

Geequlim · 2017-11-17T01:22:41Z

Please stop adding new keywords to GDScript!

bojidar-bg · 2017-11-17T12:10:26Z

I think I will not be rebasing this right now, since the community doesn't seem to like having more keywords in GDScript.

What might get implemented is the proposal in #10799 (comment), which is to have the script's name instead of "Script Variables", thus splitting variables from extended scripts.

You might react with 👍 if this proposal sounds better to you, with 👎 if you think it won't be any better than current master, and with 😕 if you think this proposal is worse than the one currently implemented in this PR (you might want to also write a comment with why you think so).

Zireael07 · 2017-11-17T12:15:20Z

Derived scripts being separate is fine and dandy but I often find myself with so many variables in a single script that I need categories within this single script. (Mostly a consequence of the fact that I use tool scripts A LOT)

bojidar-bg · 2017-11-17T12:38:04Z

@Zylann Somewhat related to #12837, one day we would be able to separate tool scripts away.

Note that this PR is not required for making categories via GDScript, since you can just use _get_property_list to populate them.

reduz · 2017-11-22T15:01:11Z

I agree, too many keywords, we should have annotation support at this point.

reduz · 2017-11-22T15:06:08Z

Afte thinking about it, i would do

export_category

so only text like

export_category "hello" would be good, and that's it.

reduz · 2017-11-22T15:08:51Z

also do not accept indentifiers in there, it's really confusing

bojidar-bg · 2017-11-22T15:53:52Z

I think I will close this PR for now, maybe to be reopened some time after 3.1 starts. Sorry to everyone who needs it now, but, seems like more GDScript enchancements would come later 😃

neikeq · 2017-11-22T16:31:08Z

@juan-garcia-m's PR was perfect for this IMO. The only thing I would add to it is to optionally use parenthesis for the parameters, this way the attribute can be in the same line as the declaration.

juan-garcia-m · 2017-11-23T15:35:46Z

@neikeq I did indeed added parenthesis at first, but I removed them as it seem more in the style of GDScript.
Sadly, I deleted the repo for the PR... Not sure I have the code somewhere in local, but it should be outdated by now.
I am now implementing Java support for Godot externally, and all the ideas I had for the annotations I will do them in Java instead.
But if the community is still interested on having GDScript annotations I could help though.

kubecz3k · 2017-11-23T15:46:23Z

@juan-garcia-m you are implementing java externally? That is interesting. What VM will you use?

neikeq · 2017-11-23T16:06:17Z

@juan-garcia-m Your commits are still available in #9469 :)

juan-garcia-m · 2017-11-23T16:41:58Z

@neikeq Oh! I see :)

@kubecz3k IKVM.NET, abusing the fact that we have official Mono support. You will still need to have Mono installed (and a JDK of course), but even Godot itself will be downloaded by the Gradle plugin I am writing. Having addons as dependencies, automatic typed scenes and Eclipse support is on the way. Hopefully I will publish an Alpha in the coming weeks.

Xrayez · 2020-04-24T12:27:23Z

@Zylann Somewhat related to #12837, one day we would be able to separate tool scripts away.

Note that this PR is not required for making categories via GDScript, since you can just use _get_property_list to populate them.

@bojidar-bg I confirm the ability to create both categories and groups with this method (3.2):

Those prefixes are still visible though, not sure how to hide them to make less verbose in the inspector this way. Here's how I do it:

func _get_property_list():
	var props = []
	add_category("Arms", props)
	add_group("Left", props)
	add_property("left_layer_ofs_1", TYPE_REAL, 1 / 3.0, props)
	add_property("left_layer_ofs_2", TYPE_REAL, 2 / 3.0, props)
	add_group("Right", props)
	add_property("right_layer_ofs_1", TYPE_REAL, 1 / 3.0, props)
	add_property("right_layer_ofs_2", TYPE_REAL, 2 / 3.0, props)
	return props


func add_group(p_name, r_properties: Array):
	r_properties.push_back({
			name = p_name,
			type = TYPE_NIL,
			hint = PROPERTY_HINT_NONE,
			usage = PROPERTY_USAGE_GROUP | PROPERTY_USAGE_SCRIPT_VARIABLE,
		}
	)


func add_category(p_name, r_properties: Array):
	r_properties.push_back({
			name = p_name,
			type = TYPE_NIL,
			hint = PROPERTY_HINT_NONE,
			usage = PROPERTY_USAGE_CATEGORY | PROPERTY_USAGE_SCRIPT_VARIABLE,
		}
	)


func add_property(p_name, p_type, p_value, r_properties: Array):
	r_properties.push_back({
			name = p_name,
			type = p_type,
			value = p_value
		}
	)

bojidar-bg · 2020-04-24T12:57:19Z

@Xrayez In ClassDB::add_property_group, it is done by passing the prefix for the variables inside the group as the hint string of the group.

godot/core/class_db.cpp

Lines 924 to 931 in 26ecd92

    
           void ClassDB::add_property_group(StringName p_class, const String &p_name, const String &p_prefix) { 
        
           	OBJTYPE_WLOCK; 
        
           	ClassInfo *type = classes.getptr(p_class); 
        
           	ERR_FAIL_COND(!type); 
        
           	type->property_list.push_back(PropertyInfo(Variant::NIL, p_name, PROPERTY_HINT_NONE, p_prefix, PROPERTY_USAGE_GROUP)); 
        
           }

So, something like this will work:

func _get_property_list():
	…
	add_group("Left", "left_", props)
	…
	add_group("Right", "right_", props)
…
func add_group(p_name, p_prefix, r_properties: Array):
	r_properties.push_back({
			…
			hint_string = p_prefix,
			…
		}
	)
…

Zireael07 · 2020-04-24T12:58:42Z

This is lovely, can one of the snippets go somewhere in documentation? At last, my exported variables won't be a total mess in debugger <3 <3

Xrayez · 2020-04-24T13:15:00Z

Yep, works like a charm!

@Zireael07 _get_property_list method certainly lacks documentation in the built-in docs. There are also related _set and _get virtual methods which need to be overridden in some cases combined with _get_property_list.

For instance, those hint and hint_string act depending on the context, including usage enum constants... Like float ranges for the slider which is wrapped in export(float, 0, 100) syntax on the script level. So those need to be documented per each Variant compatible type.

EDIT: this info could likely be added to http://docs.godotengine.org/en/latest/getting_started/scripting/gdscript/gdscript_exports.html

Zylann · 2020-04-24T14:59:10Z

It would be really nice if inspector groups were not something embedded inside _get_property_list (which then affects loading times and reflection calls when executed in exported games)

3top1a · 2020-09-18T18:35:34Z

@Xrayez This works, but how do you access the variables?

Shadowblitz16 · 2021-04-17T00:12:04Z

why hasn't this been merged in 4 years?
the only problem was what? too many keywords?
we still don't have this feature and annotations still haven't been released.

SirPigeonz · 2021-04-19T11:04:52Z

why hasn't this been merged in 4 years?
the only problem was what? too many keywords?
we still don't have this feature and annotations still haven't been released.

Check mentions above it was implemented differently and is merged and used for GDScript 2.0

Zylann · 2021-04-19T11:17:59Z

I had a look at the PR linked from this issue to the GDScript 2.0 docs, and it seems it doesnt mention category annotations anywhere. The 3.x way of doing it was erased with no replacement: https://github.com/godotengine/godot-docs/pull/4247/files
Was it added later or is it still not implemented?

Xrayez · 2021-04-19T11:46:20Z

See godotengine/godot-docs#3623 (comment), perhaps there might be a thing like dynamic annotations? Who knows, there's no GDScript 2.0 specification out there publicly available... 😛

@Xrayez This works, but how do you access the variables?

Late to respond but usually dynamically created variables can be accessed with set() and get() methods explicitly. But GDScript seems to handle even dynamically created properties via plain . operator (if those properties are not declared with var).

And yeah, you'll have to either:

override _set and _get callbacks for them to work
declare those properties in script with var, without export keyword (_get_property_list() will act as a configuration method for those properties).

nathanfranke · 2022-07-12T12:49:27Z

Proposal: godotengine/godot-proposals#1255
Superseding PR: #62707

bojidar-bg added feature proposal topic:gdscript labels Aug 12, 2017

bojidar-bg added this to the 3.0 milestone Aug 12, 2017

Add categories to GDScript exported variables

cfe71c0

Closes godotengine#4378 via the 4th proposal, as it is easiest to implement

bojidar-bg force-pushed the 4378-gdscript-categories branch from f1916c5 to cfe71c0 Compare August 15, 2017 11:06

bojidar-bg closed this Nov 22, 2017

akien-mga added the archived label Nov 22, 2017

vnen mentioned this pull request Jul 21, 2018

Annotations in GDScript #20318

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Add categories to GDScript exported variables #10303

Add categories to GDScript exported variables #10303

bojidar-bg commented Aug 12, 2017

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nathanfranke commented Jul 12, 2022

Add categories to GDScript exported variables #10303

Add categories to GDScript exported variables #10303

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bojidar-bg commented Aug 12, 2017

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reduz commented Nov 22, 2017

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neikeq commented Nov 22, 2017

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