If you’re saving an object in a TArray or TMap and it appears not to work, here are a few troubleshooting tips. Sometimes it will appear to you that unreal engine creates and returns a new variable instead of returning the already saved one. You maybe suspecting Garbage Collection but most of the time this is human error.
Working With Unreal Containers
A common mistake when working with containers is not to get the objects in the container by reference.
Unreal Engine has data containers like TArray, TMap and TSet.
When working with storing objects in these containers the developer can either insert a pointer to the object or the object itself.
Most of UObjects are pointers and added as pointers. So you’ll always be dealing with a reference(pointer).
The problem may arise when we use a custom struct or class.
We may create an object of that class and insert it into a TArray. Keep in mind we are not inserting a pointer but the object.
Now, when we get the object from the TArray with the intention of modifying it, we may forget to get it by reference. This means we would be getting a copy and modifying the copy the actual object inside the TArray.
The solution is to always get objects by reference when working with containers or better yet, always create pointers to the objects and insert the pointers in the containers instead. By using pointers you’ll always be sure you are modifying the object.
Here is an example of how not to do it and how to do it, notice the use of the & reference character:
//You are working with copies here
for (auto ObjInArray : TArrayOfObjects)
{}
//THIS IS THE CORRECT WAY TO DO IT
//Get the reference
for (auto& ObjInArray : TArrayOfObjects)
{}
