Serialize arrays from text file to inspector (Unity 5 with c#)

Question

I am working on saving arrays that I have pulled from a long text file. I used a foreach loop to get the arrays but am a little lost on where to go from here. I can use [serializedfield] to show the coordinates X,Y,Z in the inspector but need to figure out how to save the data from the loop. Any advice to get me in the right direction would be awesome!
Thank you ahead of time. Here is my code:

using UnityEngine;
using System;
using System.Collections;
using System.Collections.Generic;

[Serializable]
public class MultiArrayList : MonoBehaviour {

public TextAsset datafile;
private int i;
//private float[,] coordinates;
[SerializeField] private float[] coordX;
[SerializeField] private float[] coordY;
[SerializeField] private float[] coordZ;
[SerializeField] private float[] intensity;
//private Vector3 verts;

// Use this for initialization
void Start() {

    string[] dataLines = datafile.text.Split ('\n');
    string[] lineValues;
    //print (dataLines.Length);
    i=0;

    //float[,] coordinates = new float[6853, 3]; 
    float[] coordX = new float[6853];
    float[] coordY = new float[6853]; 
    float[] coordZ = new float[6853]; 
    float[] intensity = new float[6853];
    foreach (string line in dataLines) {

        lineValues = line.Split (' ');
        float coordinateX = float.Parse (lineValues [0]);
        float coordinateY = float.Parse (lineValues [1]);
        float coordinateZ = float.Parse (lineValues [2]);
        float intens = float.Parse (lineValues [3]);

        coordX [i] = coordinateX;
        coordY [i] = coordinateY;
        coordZ [i] = coordinateZ;

        //coordinates [i, 0] = coordinateX;
        //coordinates [i, 1] = coordinateY;
        //coordinates [i, 2] = coordinateZ;

        intensity [i] = intens;

        //print (coordX [i]);

        i++; 

        //Vector3 coordinates = new Vector3 (coordinateX,coordinateY,coordinateZ);
        //print (coordinates);

    }


}

void OnGUI()
{
    Display (coordX [i]);
}

}

Answer 1

Here is a suggestion. You can use XML-Serialization to save the entire class with a given dataset to a xml-file. In the example below I included 2 methods for saving and retrieving the data: I made the arrays a little smaller to be able to show also the ouput. But it should work fine with larger arrays also :) One thing is important: you have to declare the arrays as public. Otherwise they will not end up in the file.

public class MultiArrayList
{

    private int i = 0;
    //private float[,] coordinates;
    public int MyProperty { get; set; }
    public float[] coordX { get; set; }
    public float[] coordY { get; set; }
    public float[] coordZ { get; set; }
    public float[] intensity { get; set; }
    //private Vector3 verts;

    // Use this for initialization
    public void Start()
    {
        string test = "1 2 3 99\n4 5 6 99\n7 89 90 99";
        string[] dataLines = test.Split('\n');
        string[] lineValues;
        //print (dataLines.Length);
        i = 0;

        //float[,] coordinates = new float[6853, 3]; 
        coordX = new float[4];
        coordY = new float[4];
        coordZ = new float[4];
        intensity = new float[4];
        foreach (string line in dataLines)
        {

            lineValues = line.Split(' ');
            float coordinateX = float.Parse(lineValues[0]);
            float coordinateY = float.Parse(lineValues[1]);
            float coordinateZ = float.Parse(lineValues[2]);
            float intens = float.Parse(lineValues[3]);

            coordX[i] = coordinateX;
            coordY[i] = coordinateY;
            coordZ[i] = coordinateZ;


            intensity[i] = intens;

            i++;

        }

        // save the entire class with the results.
        save("test.xml");

    }


    public void save(string fileName)
    {
        using (var writer = new StreamWriter(fileName))
        {   
            // EDIT: got lost during copy paste
            var serializer = new XmlSerializer(this.GetType());

            serializer.Serialize(writer, this);

            writer.Flush();
        }
    }


    public static MultiArrayList Load(string FileName)
    {
        MultiArrayList t = new MultiArrayList();

        using (var stream = File.OpenRead(FileName))     
        {
            var serializer = new XmlSerializer(typeof(MultiArrayList));
            t = serializer.Deserialize(stream) as MultiArrayList;

        }

        return t;
    }

}

This is the output that you get:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<MultiArrayList xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
  <MyProperty>0</MyProperty>
  <coordX>
    <float>1</float>
    <float>4</float>
    <float>7</float>
    <float>0</float>
  </coordX>
  <coordY>
    <float>2</float>
    <float>5</float>
    <float>89</float>
    <float>0</float>
  </coordY>
  <coordZ>
    <float>3</float>
    <float>6</float>
    <float>90</float>
    <float>0</float>
  </coordZ>
  <intensity>
    <float>99</float>
    <float>99</float>
    <float>99</float>
    <float>0</float>
  </intensity>
</MultiArrayList>

When you use the load method you get an Object with all the values in your arrays. Hope this can help

EDIT: to use the StreamWriter you need to include the namespace:

using System.IO;

to use the XmlSerializer you need to include the namespace:

using System.Xml.Serialization;