Want to create your first UI with UI Toolkit? Use this basic UI Toolkit workflow example to get started.
Note: For demonstration purpose, this guide describes how to add UI controls for the Editor UI. However, the instructions on adding UI controls to a UI Document also apply to runtime UI. For more information, see Get started with runtime UI.
If you perform a specific task often, you can use UI Toolkit to create a dedicated UI for it. For example you can create a custom Editor window. The example demonstrates how to create a custom Editor window and add UI controls into your custom Editor window with UI Builder, UXML, and C# script.
You can find the completed files that this example creates in this GitHub repository.
Assets
folder, and then select Create > UI Toolkit > Editor Window.MyCustomEditor
.This creates a custom Editor window with two labels. You can open the Editor window from the menu (Window > UI Toolkit > MyCustomEditor). You can find the source files for it in the Assets/Editor
folder.
You can add UI controls into your window in the following ways:
You can use any of these methods individually, or combine. The following examples create three sets of labels, buttons, and toggles with a combination of these methods.
To visually add UI controls to your window, use UI Builder. The following steps add a button and a toggle into your custom Editor window in addition to the default label.
Editor
folder, double-click MyCustomEditor.uxml
to open the UI Builder.These controls were created in UI Builder
in the Text field.This is button1
in the Text field.button1
in the Name field.Number?
in the Label field.toggle1
in the Name field.If you prefer to define your UI in a text file, you can edit the UXML to add the UI controls. The following steps add another set of label, button, and toggle into your window.
In the Editor
folder, click Assets > Create > UI Toolkit > UI Document to create a UXML file called MyCustomEditor_UXML.uxml
.
Click the arrow on MyCustomEditor_UXML.uxml
in the Project window.
Double-click inlineStyle
to open MyCustomEditor_UXML.uxml
in a text editor.
Replace the contents of MyCustomEditor_UXML.uxml
with the following:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<engine:UXML
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xmlns:engine="UnityEngine.UIElements"
xmlns:editor="UnityEditor.UIElements"
xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="../../UIElementsSchema/UIElements.xsd"
>
<engine:Label text="These controls were created with UXML." />
<engine:Button text="This is button2" name="button2"/>
<engine:Toggle label="Number?" name="toggle2"/>
</engine:UXML>
Open MyCustomEditor.cs
.
Add a private VisualTreeAsset
field called m_UXMLTree
to the MyCustomEditor
class. Put the attribute [SerializeField]
above it:
[SerializeField]
private VisualTreeAsset m_UXMLTree;
Add the following code to the end of CreateGUI()
.
root.Add(m_UXMLTree.Instantiate());
In the Project window, select MyCustomEditor.cs
.
Drag MyCustomEditor_UXML.uxml
from the Project window into the UXML Tree field in the Inspector. This assigns your UXML to the visual tree.
Select Window > UI Toolkit > MyCustomEditor. This opens your custom Editor window with three labels, two buttons, and two toggles.
If you prefer coding, you can add UI Controls to your window with a C# script. The following steps add another set of label, button, and toggle into your window.
Open MyCustomEditor.cs
.
Unity uses UnityEngine.UIElements
for basic UI controls like label, button, and toggle. To work with UI controls, you must add the following declaration if it’s not already present.
using UnityEngine.UIElements;
Change the text of the existing label from "Hello World! From C#"
to "These controls were created using C# code."
.
The EditorWindow class has a property called rootVisualElement
. To add the UI controls to your window, first instantiate the element class with some attributes, and then use the Add
methods of the rootVisualElement
.
Your finished CreateGUI()
method should look like the following:
public void CreateGUI()
{
// Each editor window contains a root VisualElement object
VisualElement root = rootVisualElement;
// VisualElements objects can contain other VisualElements following a tree hierarchy.
Label label = new Label("These controls were created using C# code.");
root.Add(label);
Button button = new Button();
button.name = "button3";
button.text = "This is button3.";
root.Add(button);
Toggle toggle = new Toggle();
toggle.name = "toggle3";
toggle.label = "Number?";
root.Add(toggle);
// Import UXML
var visualTree = AssetDatabase.LoadAssetAtPath<VisualTreeAsset>("Assets/Editor/MyCustomEditor.uxml");
VisualElement labelFromUXML = visualTree.Instantiate();
root.Add(labelFromUXML);
}
Close your custom Editor window if you haven’t done so.
Select Window > UI Toolkit > MyCustomEditor to re-open your custom Editor window to see three labels, three buttons, and three toggles.
You can set up event handlers for your UI controls so that when you click the button, and select or clear the toggle, your UI controls perform some tasks.
In this example, set up event handlers that:
Your finished MyCustomEditor.cs
looks like the following:
using UnityEditor;
using UnityEngine;
using UnityEngine.UIElements;
public class MyCustomEditor : EditorWindow
{
[MenuItem("Window/UI Toolkit/MyCustomEditor")]
public static void ShowExample()
{
MyCustomEditor wnd = GetWindow<MyCustomEditor>();
wnd.titleContent = new GUIContent("MyCustomEditor");
}
[SerializeField]
private VisualTreeAsset m_UXMLTree;
private int m_ClickCount = 0;
private const string m_ButtonPrefix = "button";
public void CreateGUI()
{
// Each editor window contains a root VisualElement object
VisualElement root = rootVisualElement;
// VisualElements objects can contain other VisualElement following a tree hierarchy.
Label label = new Label("These controls were created using C# code.");
root.Add(label);
Button button = new Button();
button.name = "button3";
button.text = "This is button3.";
root.Add(button);
Toggle toggle = new Toggle();
toggle.name = "toggle3";
toggle.label = "Number?";
root.Add(toggle);
// Import UXML
var visualTree = AssetDatabase.LoadAssetAtPath<VisualTreeAsset>("Assets/Editor/MyCustomEditor.uxml");
VisualElement labelFromUXML = visualTree.Instantiate();
root.Add(labelFromUXML);
root.Add(m_UXMLTree.Instantiate());
//Call the event handler
SetupButtonHandler();
}
//Functions as the event handlers for your button click and number counts
private void SetupButtonHandler()
{
VisualElement root = rootVisualElement;
var buttons = root.Query<Button>();
buttons.ForEach(RegisterHandler);
}
private void RegisterHandler(Button button)
{
button.RegisterCallback<ClickEvent>(PrintClickMessage);
}
private void PrintClickMessage(ClickEvent evt)
{
VisualElement root = rootVisualElement;
++m_ClickCount;
//Because of the names we gave the buttons and toggles, we can use the
//button name to find the toggle name.
Button button = evt.currentTarget as Button;
string buttonNumber = button.name.Substring(m_ButtonPrefix.Length);
string toggleName = "toggle" + buttonNumber;
Toggle toggle = root.Q<Toggle>(toggleName);
Debug.Log("Button was clicked!" +
(toggle.value ? " Count: " + m_ClickCount : ""));
}
}
To try the example, select Window > UI Toolkit > MyCustomEditor.