GDScript - Can dictionaries be typified?

te1ny · June 11, 2024, 1:55pm

Godot Version 4.3 Beta 1

Question

I made a static function to load resources and return a dictionary from the function.

I would like to specify that the key of the dictionary is

String

and the value of the key is

Cell (A class I have written)

Is this possible?

gertkeno · June 11, 2024, 2:01pm

github.com/godotengine/godot-proposals

Add static type hints for dictionary members

opened 08:06PM - 10 Sep 19 UTC

ghost

topic:gdscript

**Describe the project you are working on:** Cutscene-heavy RPG **Describe h…ow this feature / enhancement will help your project:** I want to associate some object with some identifier to make it easy to reference them from the AnimationPlayer (in this case it's some Dialogue class with data for who is talking and what they're saying.) I would like to access this data using the format `read_dialogue(id: String)`, where the id is the key in a dictionary that leads to the data. This causes my extended AnimationPlayer to pause the animation so it can autotype some text and wait for player input before moving on with the animation. However, there's currently no way to define a dictionary to have any particular kinds of keys and values, so if, for example, I wanted to add 50 different lines of text to read in this animation, I'd have to set the key's type and the value's type manually every time, which is tedious. ![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/28724859/64644979-7ffa8800-d3d9-11e9-8c7d-c10ed1dbe0f7.png) Furthermore: without dictionary hints, it's not possible to add a hint to a particular kind of Object, since the list of types you can pick from is limited to built-ins and various primitive types. Contrast this to arrays, where you can use hints to specify just about any type not present in the drop-down. So, you're not going to be able to easily create resources in-place, resulting in the OmniResource issue (except worse since it's every object ever.) **Show a mock up screenshots/video or a flow diagram explaining how your proposal will work:** `export(Dictionary, String, Resource) var hinted_dictionary` ![64645509-ab31a700-d3da-11e9-8d57-f0ca866362b2](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/28724859/64646077-dc5ea700-d3db-11e9-866a-5ab364853ada.png) **If this enhancement will not be used often, can it be worked around with a few lines of script?:** I think just about everyone will be very pleased with this addition; however, in the meantime, it's not too bothersome to avoid the issue. Instead I'll give my class an `id: String` property and loop through an array. I assume this isn't as efficient as using dictionaries, but I likely won't notice a real performance hitch. Nonetheless, it's a shame exported dictionaries can't be more useful. https://github.com/godotengine/godot/issues/25157

It’s a longstanding issue, though a promising pull request for 4.4 is in the works.

system · July 11, 2024, 2:01pm

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