Populate dropdown with a global var

papalagi

Hi everybody,

is there a way to "centralize" this exported variable dropdown?

i mean a way to write the long list just once then read from there

@export_enum("Morlako", "Reception", "Room01", "Room02", "Room03", "Room04", "Room05", "Room06", "Room07", "Room08", "Room09", "RoomX", "Room05Closed") var room_name: String

xyz

papalagi

class_name Enums
enum Rooms{Room1, Room2}

@export var room: Enums.Rooms

DaveTheCoder

You can do this:

enum NamedEnum {THING_1, THING_2, ANOTHER_THING = -1}
@export var x: NamedEnum

https://docs.godotengine.org/en/4.2/tutorials/scripting/gdscript/gdscript_exports.html#exporting-enums

read from there

Do you mean access the enum from other nodes? Access room_name from other nodes?

papalagi

DaveTheCoder

Yes, i'd basically like to have the room names list in a constant and then populate all the dropdowns reading from the constant

your solution works, the result is not a String, but i can use str():

enum room_name {Reception, Room01, Room02, Room03, Room04, Room05, Room06, Room07, Room08, Room09, RoomX, Room05Closed}
@export var room: room_name

can i put it in a CONST?

papalagi

xyz

Thank you xyz, what's the advantage of creating a class? retrieving the values from other scripts / objects?

xyz

papalagi Every gd script you make already is a class. Nothing extra is created. It's just explicitly named so the enum can be defined in one place and accessed via that class' namespace from any other script, effectively acting as a global enum type. Isn't that what you asked for?

DaveTheCoder

papalagi what's the advantage of creating a class?

You don't have to use the class_name keyword.

I have some enums defined in an autoload named Global.

For example:

enum Movement {INTERMITTENT, CONTINUOUS}

I can reference the enum in other scripts like this:
var m: Global.Movement

papalagi

xyz

ok, problem is that i want to retrieve a string, not an index, maybe ENUMS are not the ideal entity?

xyz

papalagi

enum Rooms{Room1, Room2}

print(Rooms.keys()[Rooms.Room1])

Toxe

Or slightly more readable (well, arguably): print(Rooms.find_key(Rooms.Room1))

xyz

DaveTheCoder Why drag along a whole node just to have an enum type definition?

award

xyz Presumably for interoperability. Nice to have one global place where enums are defined rather than classes needing to refer to each other to share enums. Doesn't need to be an autoload though, unless the autoload is doing other things for some reason.

xyz

award Umm, you can just have a static class named Globals or Enums. No need for autoloaded nodes whatsoever. In fact using autoloaded nodes for any kind of global data is redundant and feels hacky in 4.x. Sadly, people use them exclusively for that in 99% of cases. It's just a perpetuation of a bad habit picked up from 3.x tutorials.

award

xyz Right that's what I meant. It doesn't need to be an autoload.

DaveTheCoder

I'm using an autoload to ensure that it's in the scene tree and initialized early, so that other nodes can reference it. It's a habit I adopted in Godot 3.

Maybe a class with static variables would accomplish the same thing.

papalagi

Sorry guys, very kind of you explaining things to a noob, but too many answers i can't figure out the easiest method...

I have no problems with autoloads or new classes, this i can understand.

Starting from scratch i can have this piece of code populating the dropdown and i can put the enum in a global script, no problem:

enum LOCATION {Morlako, Reception, Room01, Room02, Room03, Room04, Room05, Room06, Room07, Room08, Room09, RoomX, Room05Closed}
@export var loc: LOCATION

i then set the loc variable via the editor

i don't understand how to retrieve the choosen key in String format, can you please :-)

xyz

papalagi
I already gave you the answer above.
In this specific case:

LOCATION.keys()[loc]

Enum name behaves like a dictionary object with strings as keys and values as their numerical counterparts. So you can access it in a way you'd access a regular dictionary.
If your enum values are not starting from zero, you'll have to use @Toxe's variant:

LOCATION.find_key(loc)