Bind Entities

Using the [BindEntity] attribute allows your components to establish dependencies with Entities in your scene.

The search is made using the Entity.Tag property:

// Binding with the first Entity in the Scene tagged with "Player"
[BindEntity(tag: "Player")]
private Entity player;

// Search all Entities with the "Item" tag...
[BindComponent(tag: "Item")]
private List<Entity> itemList;

Note

[BindEntity] can only be used inside Components. In other cases, the binding cannot be resolved.

[BindEntity] Properties

This attribute offers several ways to customize:

source (default BindEntitySource.Scene)

This property indicates where the component or components will be searched. The possible values are:

Source	Description
Scene (default)	The Entity is searched in the entire Scene. It iterates over all entities in the scene.
Children	Searches the Entity in its descendant entities, excluding the owner entity
ChildrenSkipOwner	Searches the Entity in its descendant entities, not including the owner entity
Parents	Searches the Entity in the ascendant entities, including the owner entity
ParentsSkipOwner	Searches the Entity in its ascendant entities, not including the owner entity

A brief example:

public class MyComponent : Component
{
    // Binding with the first Entity in the Scene tagged with "Player"
    [BindEntity(tag: "Player")] // source: Scene is default value 
    private Entity player;
    // ...
}

isRequired (default true)

If the value is true, the dependency is required to be resolved; otherwise, the current Component won't be attached.

The IsRequired value has the same functionality as [BindComponent] (see Bind Components for further details).

isRecursive (default true)

If set to true, the search will include all descendants (or ascendants) in the hierarchy; otherwise, the search will only include the direct descendants.

tag (default null)

The Entities will be filtered by their tag value.