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Item Stack View

Properties​

Item stack views hold constant, weak references to item stacks. Here are the main differences between item stack views and item stacks:

  • The item stack being referenced can't be modified.
  • The item stack being referenced can't be deposited elsewhere.
  • The reference is weak; the item stack object may be garbage collected if it's not referenced elsewhere.
  • If the item stack object is garbage collected, the view may become invalidated (IsValid -> false and IsEmpty -> true)
  • The item stack view is not persistent (it can't be saved/loaded in view form).
  • Item stack views can reference more or fewer items than the stack contains.

Purpose​

Item stack views are used primarily by Can functions to return an item stack that you may read but not change. Some situations also use them for 'what if' scenarios: e.g., suppose we're asking whether we can withdraw items from an inventory. The inventory has 2 items in its slot, but we can only withdraw 1. The inventory would return an view with an item count of 1 (with just an item stack, this wouldn't be possible).