NData - MVVM framework for NGUI

Hi all, it's been a while, sorry for the delay. Now, to the questions.

It should work absolutely the same way for int, and in fact binding you provided works well. See the attached modification of HealthBar example. btw Log call in Foo setter is not supposed to be called when value is set from view.

 

There was a fix for this MissingReferenceException recently, are you using the latest NData version? Just in case, the fix is just try/catch around context update. to just ignore the outdated references and then clean them up.

 

But then, how to decide which one of the templates should be instantiated? You can always modify the original NguiListItemTemplate as you need it in your project and select appropriate template based on your specific logic. Would that be reusable in other applications? What would be the typical use-case?

 

Thank you very much for the hint. GetGetMethod workaround is already apllied, will be available with the next update.

 

"ActionsList.SelectedItem.Action.testString" Path seems to be fine, the only restrictions are that Action class has to be inherited from EZData.Context and both Action and testString have to be public properties, not the fields. If that's not the case, we could take a look at the test scene with the wrong behavior.

 

It is hard to say what's wrong, without more details. Are the "Accept request" and "Reject request" windows created dynamically, or they exist in the same hierarchy as "Frient request"? Maybe you could provide the test scene with this setup, or at least scene hierarchy screenshot with this described windows?

 

does someone else experienced massiv loading time on startup using ndata... splash screen for about 10sec...

 

I get those loading times when building as development build. Try turning that off and see if it improves things i you have it on.

 

Hi,
I have a brand new project, Unity 4.2.2, NGUI 3.0.3e, nDATA 1.0.17

I have added a text file to Assets called smcs.rsp with the line -define:NGUI_3

Without the smcs.rsp file I get 2 errors, the first being:

Assets/NData/NGUI/NData/Advanced/NguiFadeVisibilityBinding.cs(38,38): error CS0246: The type or namespace name `UICheckbox' could not be found. Are you missing a using directive or an assembly reference?

With the smcs.rsp file I get 14 errors, the first being:
Assets/NData/NGUI/NData/NguiSpriteBinding.cs(22,48): error CS0122: `UIAtlas.Sprite' is inaccessible due to its protection level

What am I missing? This is reproducible on both Mac and Win platforms?

Thanks, Peter

 

Hi ArtOfBytes,

As a long time user of NDATA, I've been a happy customer and you guys have done a remarkable job to allow NGUI to do data binding.

Recently there have been many improvements in NGUI and the coming of Unity's new GUI system which is based on NGUI.
The biggest change in NGUI 3.0 has been a revamped event system which allows for greater flexibility and power.

On the asset store, I noticed that Daikon Forge Gui (www.daikonforge.com/dfgui/) has a very unique way of doing DataBinding using their event system that does not require plumbing code. This approach is much more convenient and lessen the code base.

Question: Would you consider in a future update of NDATA to leverage the new NGUI event system to do do databinding more like Daikon Forge so that we don't need the plumbing code that is currently required.

Cheers.

 

That define doesn't work for me either Launchpad. So i just added a define in one of my files. #DEFINE NGUI_3. And that worked fine.

 

awhile back I mentioned about having to do a workaround to use integer number bindings to avoid weird results for incrementing/decrementing. turns out another weird issue cropped up: the possibility of the text binding showing a float value instead of integer. no idea why this is happening.

at the minimum I think there's a formatting setting I can use to force to only display the numbers before the decimal point?

 

One use case would be I have a model that takes in 4 types of Contexts

This is the class hierarchy
SliderItem : BaseUIItem : Context
ButtonItem : BaseUIItem : Context
RadioButtonItem : BaseUIItem : Context

Then I have an EZData.Collection<BaseUIItem> collection

then I can add collection.Add(new SliderItem) collection.Add(ButtonItem) etc...


I know it's a hacky way but I've made something that maps EZContext to type of object instantiated.



Also one other question is with the NguiProjectedPositionBinding can you remove the need for the anchor using this code

var ss = worldCamera.WorldToViewportPoint(_wsPosition);
ss = nGUICamera.ViewportToWorldPoint(ss);
ss.z = 0;
gameObject.transform.position = ss;

This would give you the proper UI position.

Sorry I'm bombarding you with questions but your system has become quite an integral part of my codebase It's a great framework one of the best I've used.

 

As a long time user of NDATA, I have to say that's you guys have done an amazing job at bringing Databinding to NGUI.

Recently NGUI 3.0 has revamped its event system quite drastically and version "C" now supports anonymous delegates.
It is also known that Unity's new GUI is based on NGUI so it's going to be very nice for NGUI users.

Even though NGUI is really a very good GUI system for a long time, there are increasingly more GUI options on the asset store. One of the best one that's come along is I noticed on the asset store Daikon Forge.

http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/194561-RELEASED-Daikon-Forge-GUI-Library

The most interesting part of this GUI is its native support for Databinding natively without writing all of the plumbing code.

This leads me to wonder if its possible in a future update of NDATA, would it be possible to leverage NGUI's new event system so that we no longer have to do the plumbing code ?

Cheers and thanks for all the great work on this project.

 

The "Accept" and "Reject Request window" were fixed but the data inside it is going to be dynamic, based on the request chosen.
Thanks for your reply anyway, i have found another solution for this rather than forcing to make it worked using this point of view
Love NData

 

Thanks Enzign. That helped me prove that the define macro was indeed working. What I had to do was make the Sprite class in UIAtlas.cs in NGUI public to get around the protection level issue, but all sweet now.

 

Yep, this was an issue with me here after upgrading. Instead of changing UIAtlas.Sprite to public through, you should change references in NData to use UISpriteData. UIAtlas.Sprite was depreciated for 3.0.

 

You can always have custom ItemTemplate class, that does the item switching logic. It'll be game specific, thus not re-usable as a generic solution, but absolutely valid in your project.

New NguiProjectedPositionBinding is available in the latest update, btw, cheers.

 

weird indeed. You can of-course use the format to force its display to int, but it's not supposed to be so. We'll check that.

 

There's an update already available on asset store with sprite binding fix. UIAtlas.Sprite is now UISpriteData for NGUI 3.

 

ArtOfBytes,

I am considering a purchase of your product, but I wanted to ask a couple of questions. I've done MVVM in WPF, so i'm sold on that methodology as long as it works.

My first question involves dynamically loading in prefabricated views at runtime. What I would like to do is have a single VM but have multiple views that could work with that VM. The views would be, for example, a 'tablet ui view', a 'phone ui view' and a 'desktop ui view'. At runtime, I would determine the platform I am running on and instantiate the matching view prefab in my scene. At that point, I would hope that things would 'just work', or at most I would have to invoke a 'bind()' function to initiate binding. Is this easy to do with your framework?

My other question involves creating my own custom bindings for custom control prefabs. For example, say I have a prefab with a root gameobject and an attached MonoBehaviour of type 'DisplayCardScript'. DisplayCardScript has two properties that I wish to bind, string 'DisplayName' and int 'Quantity'. Is it easy to create a custom MonoBehaviour that would allow NData to properly handle these bindings back to a given VM?

Thanks in advance for any feedback.

 

Hi,

you can easily have multiple views, and if you assign the context to the view in Awake (or in start but before bindings scripts start), then the view will resolve all its bindings correctly and it will just work. If actual view instantiation is delayed, you can still force bindings resolution by calling UpdateBinding on bindings' scripts (like it's done in NguiItemDataContext when items are dynamically instantiates via the items source binding).

Custom bindings and custom controls are a solid part of our own projects, over the time we've re-factored the binding classes hierarchy, so that it's easily extendable, and all bindings that come with NData can be used as a reference.

 

Thank you for the reply. You have a new customer!

 

hi guys. Just wanted to let you know that google has just marked your artofbytes website as filled w/ malware and chrome will no longer let me visit it. maybe somebody has hijacked it?!

the chrome result page:

What is the current listing status for artofbytes.com?
Site is listed as suspicious - visiting this web site may harm your computer.

Part of this site was listed for suspicious activity 12 time(s) over the past 90 days.

What happened when Google visited this site?
Of the 35 pages we tested on the site over the past 90 days, 34 page(s) resulted in malicious software being downloaded and installed without user consent. The last time Google visited this site was on 2013-11-16, and the last time suspicious content was found on this site was on 2013-11-16.
Malicious software is hosted on 1 domain(s), including rkfhafg.ddns.info/.

This site was hosted on 1 network(s) including AS36351 (SOFTLAYER).

Has this site acted as an intermediary resulting in further distribution of malware?
Over the past 90 days, artofbytes.com appeared to function as an intermediary for the infection of 1 site(s) including u.to/.

Has this site hosted malware?
No, this site has not hosted malicious software over the past 90 days.

How did this happen?
In some cases, third parties can add malicious code to legitimate sites, which would cause us to show the warning message.

Next steps:
Return to the previous page.
If you are the owner of this web site, you can request a review of your site using Google Webmaster Tools. More information about the review process is available in Google's Webmaster Help Center.

 

Thanks for the observation, already working on it. Must have been some exploit in the CMS we're using.

 

Hi, Art Of Bytes!
Your guys makes a good job. But if I properly understood a concept of MVVM pattern user actions should processed by model view. Model is domain model or near with it. Am I right that domain model is some instance of EZData.Context? Why domain model should process button click events and so on? Why domain model should handle how to display action results? I think a root context should be view model in MVVM pattern and we should bind on button click event to view model, not for domain model. It's not clear for me.
Thanks!

 

Hi, in fact EZData.Context objects are on the view model layer. We found out that in many cases (for rather simple games mostly) model / viewmodel separation gives too much overhead, therefore examples don't illustrate that separation and have model merged into viewmodel, and it may look that it's MV rather than MVVM, but feel free to add the separate model layer behind this setup, and leave only view model stuff in contexts.

 

Hi,

since updated my Android SDK to the latest Version, i assume Ndata don´t work any more. All bindings in NGUI Work on PC and on iOS, but not in Android anymore. Any idea where may the issue occurs?

Thanks

Issa

 

I'm trying to do a sort of slot-machine looking circular list, where the items that scroll off the bottom should eventually re-appear on the top. I've got a table and scroll view with list item templates for the tiles and a source item binding to the list, but I'm not sure how to get it to scroll in a circle. Any ideas? Should I keep removing the last item from the EZData.Collection and re-adding it to the front, and try to manually adjust the scroll location each time? Or is there an easier way to accomplish this?

 

Hi ArtOfBytes,
Love the asset, bought it a few days ago, getting tons of use out of it.

Some suggestions for improvements to the Projected Position Binding:
1: It seems like it only works with Bottom Left anchors. This is OK but the debug text says any corner anchor should work. Please update the text or allow it to work with all corner anchors.
2: The target camera cannot be specified by path. When working with multiple viewports and multiple UI viewports it would be very nice to be able to bind this and then set it in the viewmodel instead of having to set it in the view.

Thanks! Great work!

 

Ended up writing the camera binding myself:

NguiCameraBinding.cs

Code (csharp):

1. using UnityEngine;
2. using System;
3. using System.Collections;
4. using System.Collections.Generic;
5.  
6. [System.Serializable]
7. public abstract class NguiCameraBinding : NguiBinding
8. {
9.     private EZData.Property<Camera> _cameraProperty;
10.  
11.     private bool _ignoreChanges = false;
12.    
13.     protected override void Unbind()
14.     {
15.         base.Unbind();
16.        
17.         if (_cameraProperty != null)
18.             _cameraProperty.OnChange -= OnChange;
19.  
20.         _cameraProperty = null;
21.     }
22.    
23.     private void Bind(NguiDataContext context)
24.     {
25.         _cameraProperty = context.FindProperty<Camera>(Path, this);
26.         if (_cameraProperty != null)
27.         {
28.             _cameraProperty.OnChange += OnChange;
29.             return;
30.         }
31.     }
32.    
33.     protected override void Bind()
34.     {
35.         base.Bind();
36.            
37.         var context = GetContext(Path);
38.         if (context == null)
39.         {
40.             Debug.LogWarning("NguiCameraBinding.UpdateBinding - context is null");
41.             return;
42.         }
43.        
44.         Bind(context);
45.     }
46.    
47.     protected void SetCameraValue(Camera val)
48.     {
49.         _ignoreChanges = true;
50.         if (_cameraProperty != null  _cameraProperty.GetValue() != null)
51.             _cameraProperty.SetValue(val);
52.         _ignoreChanges = false;
53.     }
54.    
55.     protected Camera GetCameraValue()
56.     {  
57.         if (_cameraProperty != null)
58.         {
59.             var go = _cameraProperty.GetValue();
60.             if (go != null)
61.                 return go;
62.         }
63.        
64.         return null;
65.     }
66.    
67.     protected abstract void ApplyNewValue(Camera val);
68.    
69.     protected override void OnChange()
70.     {
71.         base.OnChange();
72.        
73.         if (_ignoreChanges)
74.             return;
75.        
76.         ApplyNewValue(GetCameraValue());
77.     }
78. }

NguiProjectedCameraBinding.cs

Code (csharp):

1. using UnityEngine;
2.  
3. [System.Serializable]
4. [AddComponentMenu("NGUI/NData/Projected Camera Binding")]
5. [RequireComponent (typeof(NguiProjectedPositionBinding))]
6. public class NguiProjectedCameraBinding : NguiCameraBinding
7. {
8.     private Camera _targetCamera;
9.  
10.     public override void Start()
11.     {
12.         base.Start();
13.     }
14.    
15.     protected override void ApplyNewValue(Camera value)
16.     {
17.         _targetCamera = value;
18.         LateUpdate();
19.     }
20.    
21.     void LateUpdate()
22.     {
23.         GetComponent<NguiProjectedPositionBinding>().targetCamera = _targetCamera;
24.     }
25. }
26.  

this adds the desired functionality to the projected position binding

 

Greetings,

I understand that list items that are added as templates with Items source binding have a context with local scope.
But what if my list items are clickable buttons to which I want to attach an OnClick binding that would call a command in another context ?

 

Newer NGUI version 3.5.0 breaks compatibility with current Ndata version.

 

^ Came here to say the same thing. The localization methods are different now in 3.5.0.

 

I have a gameObject in a view model and I want to have it so the "Icon" property of my inventory binds to this game object and places the game object at the location of the item in the inventory. Is there any binding for gameobjects like this? Sprite binding won't work, as it is a custom generated object I need to display in my inventory.

 

Hi there,

First of all: Really nice work with NData! I like the way it's possible to separate view and view logic with it.

I wanted to dive into your addon a bit more and create some bindings myself. However, I quickly realized that it's nearly impossible to write own generic bindings. The Property class uses a generic type parameter, which is really nice to work with if you know the specific type you are working with.

But as the bindings I write should work no matter which type the property is, I would require a Context.FindProperty method which doesn't require the type of the property and would return the Property base class. Furthermore the Property base class would need an (abstract) method like

Code (csharp):

1.  object GetObjectValue()

to get the current value. The OnValueChange event is already there, which is great.

Did I oversee something? Is it planned to adjust the architecture that way?

Here is the use case I like to handle: We have a prefab for a card which visualizes a CardViewModel. The prefab contains the bindings. Now we don't want to change the prefab, so I set up a NguiChildContextBinding which binds a path as the context of a game object:

Code (csharp):

1.  
2.     public abstract class NguiChildContextBinding : NguiBinding
3.     {
4.         #region Fields
5.  
6.         public GameObject Target;
7.  
8.         private NguiChildContext childContext;
9.  
10.         private Property childContextProperty;
11.  
12.         #endregion
13.  
14.         #region Methods
15.  
16.         protected override void Bind()
17.         {
18.             base.Bind();
19.  
20.             if (this.Target == null)
21.             {
22.                 return;
23.             }
24.  
25.             var context = this.GetContext(this.Path);
26.             if (context == null)
27.             {
28.                 return;
29.             }
30.  
31.             this.childContextProperty = this.FindProperty(context, this.Path);
32.             if (this.childContextProperty == null)
33.             {
34.                 Debug.LogWarning("No child context at path " + this.Path + " found.");
35.                 return;
36.             }
37.  
38.             this.childContextProperty.OnChange += this.OnChildContextChanged;
39.  
40.             this.childContext = this.Target.AddComponent<NguiChildContext>();
41.             this.childContext.SetContext((Context)this.childContextProperty.GetObjectValue());
42.         }
43.  
44.         protected abstract Property FindProperty(NguiDataContext context, string path);
45.  
46.         protected override void Unbind()
47.         {
48.             base.Unbind();
49.  
50.             if (this.childContextProperty != null)
51.             {
52.                 this.childContextProperty.OnChange -= this.OnChildContextChanged;
53.             }
54.  
55.             this.childContextProperty = null;
56.             Destroy(this.childContext);
57.             this.childContext = null;
58.         }
59.  
60.         private void OnChildContextChanged()
61.         {
62.             var context = this.childContextProperty.GetObjectValue();
63.             Debug.Log("Child context changed to " + context);
64.  
65.             this.childContext.SetContext((Context)context);
66.         }
67.  
68.         #endregion
69.     }
70.  

Code (csharp):

1.  
2.     public class NguiChildContext : NguiDataContext
3.     {
4.         #region Public Methods and Operators
5.  
6.         public void SetContext(Context c)
7.         {
8.             this._context = c;
9.  
10.             var bindings = this.gameObject.GetComponentsInChildren<NguiBinding>();
11.             foreach (var binding in bindings)
12.             {
13.                 binding.ClearContextCache();
14.                 binding.UpdateBinding();
15.             }
16.  
17.             var multiBindings = this.gameObject.GetComponentsInChildren<NguiMultiBinding>();
18.             foreach (var binding in multiBindings)
19.             {
20.                 binding.ClearContextCache();
21.                 binding.UpdateBinding();
22.             }
23.         }
24.  
25.         #endregion
26.     }
27.  

What I needed to do now to get it mostly generic, was to add the GetObjectValue method to the Property base class and override FindProperty method for each specific binding (E.g. NguiCardViewModelBinding). This is not very elegant, of course, but it works.

As you can see the child context is using nearly the same logic as the NguiItemDataContext, in the end it is a list with one item. Maybe there's an easier way for me to achieve what I want?

 

I just discovered MasterPath which provides the functionality I needed

Nonetheless, a base FindProperty method would be great. This would allow for very generic extensions, e.g. a BooleanBinding which checks if a value is null/not null.

 

Any ETA on this fix?

 

How to bind my model to ViewModel?
public class CharacterBase : MonoBehaviour
{

private int _maxLife = 100;
private int _currentLife = 100;
private string _entityName = "N/A";

.....
}
That changes when the model changed my ViewModel?

 

This problem came up two weeks ago, we need a fix. I don't have a previous version of NGUI to fall back to, so its completely broken.

 

If you're not using localization, you can fix it by editing these two files:
NguiUtils.cs, change line 204 to

Code (csharp):

1.  output += Localization.Get(key);

NguiLocalizationKeyBinding.cs comment out line 18

 

Thanks dude <3

 

This is odd... the website for Art of Bytes is offline now.

I need those code snippets for VS anyone have them still?

 

Hi guys!

We are terribly sorry for the inconvenience!
We had a really tough time here, site will be accessible very soon.

Please, find the VS snippets in this attachment - View attachment $EZDataSnippets.zip

Thank you very much for your patience and your support!

Cheers,
Your Diversido Team

 

The new NData version with the latest NGUI compatibility is already submitted to AssetStore, so it will be available very soon

 

I'm new to MVVM and this package. I've been reading up on the documentation, examples, and MVVM in general, but it just hasn't fully 'clicked' yet.

First, just to confirm my understanding of MVVM, the View is essentially the GUI, the Model is the data structures, and the ViewModel is the game logic that acts on the data (either relating it to the GUI, or modifying the data based on GUI input)? In a previous post (page 2), you wrote something along the lines of the 'model knows everything about the ViewModel and can use its properties'. Shouldn't it be the other way around, with the model just being storage and the ViewModel acting on it?

Second, I'm confused on what the "Context" is, and how it relates to the Model and/or ViewModel. I didn't see anything about "context" in standard MVVM literature. In the NData examples that I've seen, it sometimes seems to be used in the Model and sometimes in the ViewModel, which only seems to muddle the line between Model and ViewModel. Which classes are supposed to extend the Context?

Finally, I'm probably confused partially because I already have a full data model, tied to server and local storage, and am not really sure how to integrate or refactor it to work with NData. We purchased NData because we have a pretty complex data model and GUI (purely GUI based game in this example), and it was cumbersome to ensure that the GUI always reflected all the data changes; so we're hoping that NData can help ease that process.

As for the data itself, I think its pretty standard use case: We have a root object in which we can access all other data. It contains app specific data (list of achievements, leaderboards, configuration settings), and user specific data. The user data contains some properties, but also has collections of other objects, specifically potential opponents and current games in play. Each of those contains properties and other sub objects. Its structured like this, in part, so that we can easily serialize the data to json and store to disk (or send object updates to the server), and we can deserialize the data from JSON (either from server responses, or reloading the locally stored json data). Currently, all these structures extend ScriptableObject so that we can pass them around in PlayMaker, but if necessary, I can live without that for the sake of making it work with this system.

We then have multiple NGUI panels that display, modify or create different data objects. Typically only one panel is active at a time, but there are some panels that are always persistent (for example, the application header bar shows the player's available in-game currency).

So, in terms of how this can be integrated with NData....

• Would I typically have a different ViewModel for each Panel (View?) ?
• Do I need to create a nested Context structure for each ViewModel ?
• Do these context structures just mirror the structure of the underlying data model?
• Where does external game logic fit in (ie, server calls, reading from local storage, other game management classes)? Does it need to modify the Model or the ViewModel?
• If it modifies the Model, how are these changes reflected to the ViewModel?
• If it modified the ViewModel, do I need a different ViewModel that these functions operate on? Would those changes be reflected to the other VMs, and thus the GUI?

Sorry for the bombardment of questions. Just trying to wrap my head around it all.

 

Hi chirhotec,

Maybe you already found the answers to your questions, here are just some that I can answer immediately as I am working with NData, too.

Yes, you are right, the model has no knowledge about the view model, the view model on the other side has a reference to read and write from the model.

In the examples the NData guys use the "Context" to be the model and the view model as well. If you just have simple use cases this avoids the complexity which is added by having them split into view model and model. I find it cleaner to have them separated as well plus there are some other benefits (e.g. our game logic is completely separated from Unity). So in our project "context" is just another name for the view model.

In my opinion you can start like this. Anyway, sometimes you want your view models more centered on the models, e.g. you would use a general ItemViewModel for the item lists as well as for the item detail view. Probably it's more common to have it centered on the models.

You need a way to inform the view model if something in the model changed. In most cases this would be an event like PropertyChanged or more specific ones. The view model can register for this events during initialization.

Hope my information helped a bit

 

I got an error with example "ColorsPopupList"

Error is following:

 

Hi,

Here's one change I had to make to NguiBaseBinding because I got an exception with hierarchical master paths (NguiBaseBinding.cs, line 55):

Code (csharp):

1.                
2. if (!_masterPaths.ContainsKey(lastAddedDepth))
3. {
4.     _masterPaths.Add(lastAddedDepth, lastAddedPath);
5. }
6.  

The if block was added. I'm not sure if this is the correct way of doing it, but it removed the exception for me. Maybe you can check if having the MasterPath script multiple times in a hierarchy works as intended and provide a fix with the next update if necessary.

 

@coeing, your post was very helpful indeed. Thank you!