To begin using Data Registries, you will need to enable the Data Registry plugin, then you can create, configure, and populate your first Data Registry.
Enable the Data Registry plugin by navigating to Edit > Plugins. When the Plugins window appears, search or browse through the plugins to find the Data Registry plugin located in the Gameplay category. Once you have found the plugin, ensure that the Enabled checkbox is checked.
If the Plugins window indicates that you need to restart the editor for the plugin to take effect, do so before proceeding further.
Navigate the Project Settings window by choosing Edit > Project Settings
Under the Game section in the left panel, you will see a category labeled Data Registry.
If you do not see this category, ensure that you have enabled the Data Registry plugin, and have restarted the editor at least once since enabling it.
In the right-side panel, add at least one entry to the Directories to Scan array. This tells the system where to look to find Data Registry Assets. A typical entry might be
/Game/DataRegistries, but you can add as many directories as you like, depending on the organizational scheme you prefer for your project. This is a good time to make sure that all of the directories you specified exist, and verify that any Data Registry Assets you have created are in the correct places.Navigate to one of the directories you specified in Directories to Scan in the Content Browser and add a new Data Registry Asset. You can do this by right-clicking an empty space in the right-side panel and expanding Miscellaneous in the context menu. In the expanded context menu, select DataRegistry and then pick the appropriate subclass from the list that appears.
Name and open your new Data Registry Asset.
Enter a globally unique name in the Registry Type field. If you want to use Gameplay Tags to identify Assets that should be part of this Data Registry, make sure to set it in the Base Gameplay Tag field under the ID Format category.
Set the Item Struct field to the type of struct that this Data Registry will contain. This is usually a DataTableRowHandle or a SimpleCurve, but can be any of a wide variety of data types.
Add one or more data sources to the Data Sources array. For each entry, you must choose what type of data you are adding, and specify where the data comes from. You can use the built-in data types, or add types that your project or any enabled plugin defines. At this point, you will need to have some data for the Data Registry to manage.
For simple source types like DataTable Source or CurveTable Source, which gather row data from known, pre-existing Assets, select the source Asset to read. The Table Rules section describes the caching behavior for data rows coming from the Asset you specified, so check that they are appropriate for your use case.
For meta source types like DataTable Meta Source or CurveTable Meta Source, which generate new data sources at runtime, there are a few more settings to handle. Select the source type to generate, any access or reference rules for the generated sources, and the scan or usage rules that determine how the system will find Assets. Meta sources can scan for Assets, accept registered Assets (from C++ code), or both.
As an example, you could specify the search path as
/Game/SearchableDataTables, but exclude*PrivateData*; this exclusion would remove any path that contains the substring "PrivateData", so paths like/Game/SearchableDataTables/PrivateData/and/Game/SearchableDataTables/SubPath/SomePrivateDataHere/would not be scanned.
Once you have set up your data sources, configure the Cache Rules to meet the specific needs of your project. To find the settings that you can configure, expand the Cache section in the Data Registry editor.
Because the Data Registry feature is still in development, some of the settings might not work as expected.
This is a good time to ensure that the Data Registry contains the items that you expect. Click the Refresh button on the toolbar and review the contents of the Registry Preview tab, which shows a preview of every item currently known to the Data Registry. If the results do not match your expectation, modify the data source rules and click the Refresh button again.
Rows can appear multiple times in the list if multiple sources pull them in; this is not an error, and generally indicates that a meta source has found the same data as a simple source or another meta source. The order matters when you attempt to retrieve a data item that appears in multiple sources. Only the first instance that the Data Registry discovered will be accessible.
You can Browse the Runtime Sources category, below Data Sources in the left panel, to see the source of each instance of each item in the Data Registry, listed in load order.
Once everything looks correct, save your Data Registry. In future sessions, it will load and populate itself automatically during startup. If you make changes to your Data Registry, press the Refresh button to update the data items.
If you plan to use Data Registries from C++ code, open your project's
Build.csfile. The actual file name will include the name of your project; for example, if your project's name is "MyProject", the file name will beMyProject.Build.cs. Find the line that sets up thePublicDependencyModuleNamesvariable, and add"DataRegistry"to the array. The final line should look something like this:C++PublicDependencyModuleNames.AddRange(new string[] { "Core", "CoreUObject", "Engine", "InputCore", "DataRegistry" });
After completing these steps, your project will be set up to use Data Registries! For information on how Data Registries work and what benefits they offer, refer to the main Data Registries page.