TypeCache

Description

Provides methods for fast type extraction from assemblies loaded into the Unity Domain.

Use TypeCache to access attributes and derived types information. This cache allows arbitrary Editor code to achieve better performance, compared to using System.Reflection, by leveraging a native cached type information.

It is a common use case to extract types marked with a specific attribute, or for classes that extend or implement a specific type, when building or extending the Unity Editor. Iterating types in the current domain is usually a slow operation that scales linearly based on the number of types.

To speed up type extraction, the Editor builds an acceleration table, on the native side, that contains information about type attributes and derived classes and interfaces.

Note: Unlike custom attributes, TypeCache generally does not cache pseudo-attributes. For more information, refer to Microsoft's documentation on attributes and pseudo-attributes. This means methods such as TypeCache.GetMethodsWithAttribute do not usually return methods marked with pseudo-attributes. One exception is TypeCache.GetTypesWithAttribute, which works for a small subset of pseudo-attributes. For more information, refer to TypeCache.GetTypesWithAttribute.

using UnityEditor;
using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;

public class VolumeComponent {}

public class Example
{
    static List<Type> s_VolumeComponents;
    static Example()
    {
        s_VolumeComponents = TypeCache.GetTypesDerivedFrom<VolumeComponent>().ToList();
    }
}

Static Methods