These are the docs for 12.0, an old version of SpatialOS. The docs for this version are frozen: we do not correct, update or republish them. 14.3 is the newest →

Querying the world

You can search the world for entities, using entity queries that use a rich query language.

This is useful if you want to get information about entities, including entities that your worker doesn’t have checked out.

You should keep entity queries as limited as possible. All queries hit the network and cause a runtime lookup, which is expensive even in the best cases. This means you should:

always limit queries to a specific sphere of the world
only return the information you need from queries (eg the specific components you care about)
if you’re looking for entities that are within your worker’s checkout radius, search internally on the worker instead of using a query, for example using Unity’s GameObject Find methods

A query can return entity IDs, so you can query for entities that you want to run a command on.

Prerequisites

In order to send an entity query, a worker must have permission to do so. For more information, see the Worker permissions page.

Building a query

To build up a query, use the Query class (using Improbable.Unity.Core.EntityQueries). Each of its methods returns an IConstraint: an object that defines the thing you’re looking for. Some of the methods take combinations of IConstraints, so you can build a query up out of several constraints.

Query exposes the following methods:

public static IConstraint HasEntityId(EntityId entityId);

public static IConstraint HasComponent<TComponent>() where TComponent : IComponentMetaclass;

public static IConstraint HasComponent(uint componentId);

public static IConstraint InSphere(Coordinates center, double radius);

public static IConstraint InSphere(double x, double y, double z, double radius);

public static IConstraint And(IConstraint constraint1, IConstraint constraint2, params IConstraint[] constraints);

public static IConstraint Or(IConstraint constraint1, IConstraint constraint2, params IConstraint[] constraints);

Once you’ve built an IConstraint, call one of the following methods on it to convert it into an EntityQuery (the object type taken by SendQuery). Which method you use depends on what information you want to get from the query:

To get a count of the entities that match the query, use public EntityQuery ReturnCount();
To only get the IDs of entities that match the query, use public EntityQuery ReturnOnlyEntityIds();
To get specific components of entities that match the query, use public EntityQuery ReturnComponents(uint componentType, params uint[] componentTypes);
To get all components of entities that match the query, use public EntityQuery ReturnAllComponents();

Sending a query

To send a query, use SendQuery:

ICommandResponseHandler<EntityQueryResult> SendQuery(IComponentWriter writer, EntityQuery query)

Example

This example finds all entities within 20 world units of a position that have a Health component. If the query succeeds, it logs how many entities were found, picks the first one in the list, and runs a function on that entity.

var query = Query.And(
    Query.HasComponent<Health>(),
    Query.InSphere(transform.position.x, transform.position.y, transform.position.z, 20.0)
  ).ReturnOnlyEntityIds();

SpatialOS.Commands.SendQuery(healthWriter, query)
  .OnSuccess(result => {
    Debug.Log("Found " + result.EntityCount + " nearby entities with a health component");
    if (result.EntityCount < 1) {
      return;
    }
    Map<EntityId, Entity> resultMap = result.Entities;
    EntityId anEntityId = resultMap.First.Value.Key;
    DoSomething(anEntityId);
  })
  .OnFailure(errorDetails => Debug.Log("Query failed with error: " + errorDetails));

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