UI Toolkit Data Binding - Overview

This package adds data binding to UI Toolkit elements by providing a Link object that points at object data and a LinkedElement that knows to refresh with the linked data. No watchers are used so nothing is constantly checking variables to see if they've changed, you have complete control over what updates and when. However, if you want automatic refreshes immediately on data change there's a simple pattern to do that as well.

Features

Works with both in-game and custom editor UI.

Make your UI refresh manually via Link.Refresh() or automatic whenever your data changes.

No data watchers constantly checking for updates so there's no constant performance hit.

Refreshes only the visible UI, elements not visible in the DOM are refreshed automatically when made visible.

Bind UI to any object data anywhere, it can even bind to private properties.

Link objects are considered the same if they point to the same data; no need to carry Link references all over the place.

In-editor documentation with live examples and code snippets.

Manual refresh example - name label

ObjectData data = new ObjectData { name = "default" };

//                                      (object, "path")
Link<string> nameLink = new Link<string>(data, "name");

// Manual Refreshing - whenever nameLink.Refresh() is called this label will update.
LinkedElement nameElement = new LinkedElement(
  nameLink,
  () => new Label(data.name)
);

// Add nameElement to any other VisualElement in your UI

Automatic refresh example

// Automatic refreshes are handled within the object
class ObjectData {
  private string _name = "default";
  public Link<string> nameLink;

  // We need to setup a virtual property that calls Link.Refresh() whenever the data is set.
  public string name {
    get => _name;
    set {
      _name = value;
      nameLink.Refresh();
    }
  }

  public ObjectData() {
    nameLink = new Link<string>(this, "_name");
  }
}

ObjectData data = new ObjectData { name = "default" };

// We can use the objects' nameLink instead of creating a new one
LinkedElement nameElement = new LinkedElement(
  data.nameLink,
  () => new Label(data.name)
);

// Add nameElement to any other VisualElement in your UI

Installation

Grab it from the Unity Asset Store.