UE Core Types Handlers

We bundled some custom serialization handlers for common Unreal Engine types (think FText/FVector/FColor) to improve developer experience. You need to explicitly set it up with your serializer/deserializers.

//  setup core types serializers
FDcSerializer Serializer;
DcSetupCoreTypesSerializeHandlers(Serializer);

//  setup core types deserializers
FDcDeserializer Deserializer;
DcSetupCoreTypesDeserializeHandlers(Deserializer);

These are also used in DataConfig blueprint nodes.

Note that you always can custom these default behavior by writing your own handlers.

FText

FText is used to handle localization in UE and it's quite different from FString. When calling ReadText() on JSON/MsgPack reader we pipe the string through a helper method FTextStringHelper::CreateFromBuffer() which parses and handles NSLOCTEXT()/LOCTABLE() style string.

//  DataConfigTests/Private/DcTestProperty5.cpp
{
    "TextFieldAlpha" : "NSLOCTEXT(\"DataConfig.Tests\", \"BAR_TEST\", \"Localize String Bar\")",
    "TextFieldBeta" : "LOCTABLE(\"/Bogus/Path/To/Table\", \"FOO_TEST\")"
}

The escaping sequences in JSON makes it a bit difficult to use. With the core types handlers we also accept arrays:

//  DataConfigTests/Private/DcTestRoundtrip2.cpp
{
    // [<namespace>, <text-id>, <source>], same as `NSLOCTEXT()`
    "TextFieldAlpha" : [
        "DataConfig.Tests",
        "BAR_TEST",
        "Localize String Bar"
    ],
    // [<string-table-id>, <text-id>], same as `LOCTABLE()`
    "TextFieldBeta" : [
        "/Bogus/Path/To/Table",
        "FOO_TEST"
    ]
}

Compact Presentation

Without any special handling a FVector is serialized as a JSON object like this:

{
    "X" : 1,
    "Y" : 2,
    "Z" : 3,
}

This is fine but sometimes we want it to be more compact. DataConfig now comes with a set of serialize/deserialize handlers that writes the commonly used types in compact form.

With a struct like this:

USTRUCT()
struct DATACONFIGEXTRA_API FDcExtraCoreTypesStruct
{
    GENERATED_BODY()

    UPROPERTY() FGuid GuidField1;
    UPROPERTY() FGuid GuidField2;

    UPROPERTY() FVector2D Vec2Field1;
    UPROPERTY() FVector2D Vec2Field2;

    UPROPERTY() FVector VecField1;
    UPROPERTY() FVector VecField2;

    UPROPERTY() FPlane PlaneField1;
    UPROPERTY() FPlane PlaneField2;

    UPROPERTY() FMatrix MatrixField1;
    UPROPERTY() FMatrix MatrixField2;

    UPROPERTY() FBox BoxField1;
    UPROPERTY() FBox BoxField2;

    UPROPERTY() FRotator RotatorField1;
    UPROPERTY() FRotator RotatorField2;

    UPROPERTY() FQuat QuatField1;
    UPROPERTY() FQuat QuatField2;

    UPROPERTY() FTransform TransformField1;
    UPROPERTY() FTransform TransformField2;

    UPROPERTY() FColor ColorField1;
    UPROPERTY() FColor ColorField2;

    UPROPERTY() FLinearColor LinearColorField1;
    UPROPERTY() FLinearColor LinearColorField2;

    UPROPERTY() FIntPoint IntPointField1;
    UPROPERTY() FIntPoint IntPointField2;

    UPROPERTY() FIntVector IntVectorField1;
    UPROPERTY() FIntVector IntVectorField2;

    UPROPERTY() FDateTime DateTimeField1;
    UPROPERTY() FDateTime DateTimeField2;

    UPROPERTY() FTimespan TimespanField1;
    UPROPERTY() FTimespan TimespanField2;

};

It would be serialized like this:

{
    "GuidField1" : [       1,        2,        3,        4],
    "GuidField2" : [       0,        0,        0,        0],
    "Vec2Field1" : [        0,         1],
    "Vec2Field2" : [        0,         0],
    "VecField1" : [        0,         0,         1],
    "VecField2" : [        0,         0,         0],
    "PlaneField1" : [        1,         2,         3,         4],
    "PlaneField2" : [        0,         0,         0,         0],
    "MatrixField1" : [
        [        1,         0,         0,         0],
        [        0,         1,         0,         0],
        [        0,         0,         1,         0],
        [        0,         0,         0,         1]
    ],
    "MatrixField2" : [
        [        0,         0,         0,         0],
        [        0,         0,         0,         0],
        [        0,         0,         0,         0],
        [        0,         0,         0,         0]
    ],
    "BoxField1" : {
        "Min" : [        0,         0,         0],
        "Max" : [        0,         0,         1],
        "IsValid" : 1
    },
    "BoxField2" : {
        "Min" : [        1,         1,         1],
        "Max" : [        0,         0,        -1],
        "IsValid" : 1
    },
    "RotatorField1" : [        1,         2,         3],
    "RotatorField2" : [        0,         0,         0],
    "QuatField1" : [        1,         2,         3,         4],
    "QuatField2" : [        0,         0,         0,         0],
    "TransformField1" : {
        "Rotation" : [        0,         0,         0,         1],
        "Translation" : [        1,         2,         3],
        "Scale3D" : [        1,         1,         1]
    },
    "TransformField2" : {
        "Rotation" : [        0,         0,         0,         1],
        "Translation" : [        0,         0,         0],
        "Scale3D" : [        1,         1,         1]
    },
    "ColorField1" : "#000000FF",
    "ColorField2" : "#0000FFFF",
    "LinearColorField1" : [        0,         0,         0,         1],
    "LinearColorField2" : [        1,         1,         1,         1],
    "IntPointField1" : [       1,        2],
    "IntPointField2" : [       0,        0],
    "IntVectorField1" : [       1,        2,        3],
    "IntVectorField2" : [       0,        0,        0],
    "DateTimeField1" : "0001.01.01-00.00.00",
    "DateTimeField2" : "1988.07.23-00.00.00",
    "TimespanField1" : "+00:00:00.000",
    "TimespanField2" : "+5.06:07:08.000"
}

This would make large JSON dumps more readable. Deserialize also works and it supports both array and object form.