Entities

In Ceramic, the concept of entity is central, the ceramic.Entity type is used by a lot of built-in objects and will help you architecture your app.

So, what is really an entity?

A summary:

  • It is constructed with new, like any haxe object, then has to be destroyed with destroy() when not needed anymore.

  • Events can be bound to it (and automatically unbound when the entity is destroyed).

  • Components can be attached to it by implementing the Component interface, to favor composition over inheritance and have a more flexible codebase. Any component is also an entity.

  • All visuals (ceramic.Visual objects and those that inherit from it like Quad, Mesh, etc...) are also entities.

  • It can have an id (String) or data (Dynamic) assigned to it, use with caution though, these are not free performance-wise.

  • If the script plugin is enabled, hscript can be assigned to any entity using the scriptContent property.

Basic example 

// Creating a 'raw' entity
var someEntity = new Entity();

...

// Later... destroying that entity
someEntity.destroy();
someEntity = null;

Nothing fancy yet, huh?

No worries, there's much more you can do with entities, just move on to the next guide to learn about it!

Continue reading ➔ Events