Detect Duplication of assets & get the duplicates

Hey Everyone!

I need to detect when a new asset (or assets if multiple were imported) was the result of a duplication. Very specifically to do some data transforms if the asset has a custom property of mine (which has a custom PropertyDrawer for it). I've tried the Unity AssetPostProcessor but that only does general imports and the Events.current seemed to do absolutely nothing whenever I duplicated an asset.

Any help is appreciated!

 

I have a custom property that we'll just call 'MyProperty.' Any object that derives from ScriptableObject can have a MyProperty field so long as the MyProperty has a [SerializeField]. MyProperty is essentially a custom string field that generates and stores a guid that matches to an external system, essentially binding the string to certain data. (the guid is serialized but also hidden from the visual editor)

The issue is that when a designer duplicates an asset, the serialized guid that MyProperty generated is also duplicated, making all of the MyProperty data in the duplicated object bound to the same data as the original. Sometimes these assets are large with a lot of useful data that would be a time saver for designers to duplicate.

My approach was to track duplication from Unity and, if any of the objects were a ScriptableObject, go in and regenerate the guid for any fields that are of type MyProperty.

NOTE: MyProperty is NOT a MonoBehaviour. Just a basic class with a CustomPropertyDrawer and a couple serialized primitives

 

Hey Dave! Our external system is a localization management system. Essentially, our designers can alter the localization data straight from an asset, which allows them to look at how the localization will look on screen while still actually applying data.

Also that approach would take a very long time given the amount of data in our project. I've made a quick button that lets them regenerate localization on one entry (doing it to all child entries could result in infinite loops if two assets referenced each other) which takes quite a while if an asset that's duplicated has 20+ localization entries on it.

Perhaps there's not a better approach, but I just find it odd that I can't listen to an event or something from the editor (duplicate, state changes, etc) and react to them with information based on their action (IE: the new duplicates after a duplication)

Thanks a lot for the help you're giving me =)

 

Hmmm. This definitely inspires a few ideas! I will definitely try something similar (if I'm given the time) and tell you how it goes! Thanks a lot. Despite all my scouring, I didn't know AssetModificationProcessor was a thing! I only knew about the AssetPostProcessor D=

 

What I meant was that I couldn't just do it to all SerializedPropertys of my SerializedObject because some of those properties aren't my LocalizableString, they're other types that contain and render their own LocalizableString. Theirfore, I'd have to go an unknown number of levels deep, which may not have an end of depth if I have a circular reference.

So my button only refreshes a single entry, meaning they must open the dropdown and hit the button for each LocalizableString that the duplicated asset renders in the inspector