Serializing UStruct for use in DataTable

Development Pipeline & Plugins Editor Scripting
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1

I have a series of USTRUCTS. Two USTRUCTS share the same pattern of attributes, so rather than re-creating those attributes in multiple USTRUCTS, I’ve split the shared attributes into its own USTRUCT and reference it by the parent structs. Take this example:

USTRUCT()
struct FCarAttributes
{
    UPROPERTY(EditDefaultsOnly, Category="Attributes")
    int32 NumberOfSeats;  // Watch out, I've got the 8-seater upgrade.

    UPROPERTY(EditDefaultsOnly, Category="Attributes")
    int32 NumberOfWheels;  // Holy smokes, a 5 wheel car?

    // and so on ...
}    

/** Structure of the available cars, and their properties */
USTRUCT()
struct FCarData : public FTableRowBase
{
    UPROPERTY(VisibleAnywhere, BlueprintReadOnly, Category="CarStuff")
    FText FriendlyName;

    UPROPERTY(EditDefaultsOnly, Category="CarStuff")
    FCarAttributes Attributes;
}
 
/** structure of available upgrades */
USTRUCT()
struct FCarUpgradeData: public FTableRowBase
{
    /** Name of the upgrade */
    UPROPERTY(VisibleAnywhere, BlueprintReadOnly, Category="CarStuff")
    FText FriendlyName;

    /** Which attribute(s) will this upgrade increase (or alternatively, decrease)? */
    UPROPERTY(EditDefaultsOnly, Category="CarStuff")
    FCarAttributes Attributes;
}

All of this works great, up until the point of defining the Attributes field in the CSV file used for loading.

This works great:

Name,FriendlyName,Attributes
cg_car_0001,Super Fast Car Ultimate,(NumberOfSeats=9)

This, however, does not:

Name,FriendlyName,Attributes
cg_car_0001,Super Fast Car Ultimate,"(NumberOfSeats=9,NumberOfWheels=4)"

Nor has any other combination of things - I can’t see to figure out how to serialize the USTRUCT to store in the csv. Is there a special delimiter used in the separation of the struct fields within the Attributes field?

I initially created my CSV by hand with notepad, but then went on used an actual spreadsheet program to create the csv for me, in hopes that I was doing it wrong - but alas, my CSV file was fine.

Any help is appreciated!

2

Hi there, thanks for your question.

We’ve fixed our CSV parsing in 4.5 to correctly parse quoted strings to allow for this kind of data table importing, so the example that you’ve mentioned above should work just fine.

3

I guess I should’ve looked at “in-the-works” code before I modified the engine myself to fix the problem. Whoops!

Thanks!