Using reflection

If you're drunk with power and want to serialize everything, Reflection might be exactly what you are looking for. Let's say you want to serialize a property in another Component. Let's also say the property does not have a public setter. Or maybe it's a field, and it's entirely private.

Well, you can do this:

public class MyMB : MonoBehaviour, ISaveable
{
    [SaveThis] int propertyWrapper {
        get{return otherComponent.getType().GetProperty("propertyName", BindingFlags.Public | BindingFlags.NonPublic | BindingFlags.Instance).getValue(otherComponent);}
        set{otherComponent.getType().GetProperty("propertyName", BindingFlags.Public | BindingFlags.NonPublic | BindingFlags.Instance).setValue(otherComponent, value);}
    }
}

It's not pretty code, but it is powerful. Now, I'm not about to give you a lecture on Reflection, but, if you are not familiar with it, I do think you should research it. It's pretty neat.

Abusing reflection

A word of warning that might be funny to you if you are a more experienced programmer than I am.

They say that when you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail. I find this to be particularly true when it comes to writing code. If you've just learnt about a nifty tool or pattern, you want to use it everywhere.

Reflection happens to be my most recently acquired hammer, as the analogy goes. I find that, lately, my first instinct when I run into any problem is to just hit it on the head with Reflection until it's solved. And it'll happen to you, too.

I'm not saying "don't use Reflection!". Reflection is an incredibly flexible and powerful tool. Hell, it's the basis of the entire implementation of this plugin.

It also is a very disruptive tool that lets you ignore the design decisions of the people who wrote the libraries you are using (decisions that probably had a reason behind them), requires very verbose syntax that's nigh on unreadable, and squanders all the many benefits of having compile-time static typing (seriously, I don't know how you guys can live like that, Python people).

So, do learn how to use Reflection. It's a wonderfully powerful tool. But also remember that when you've just found a really good hammer is the moment when asking "is this really a nail?" becomes the most important.