JSON save system for Unity

Question

I made a Json save system for my Unity game. I wanted to make something as generic as possible to keep the code DRY. I couldn't find much information online on how to make something generic.

Could you guys let me know what do you think of it?

So first, I have this utils class to save and load json data.

public class JsonDataManagement
{
    private static string GetPath(string fileName)
    {
        return Application.persistentDataPath + Path.AltDirectorySeparatorChar + fileName;
    }

    public static void SaveData<T>(string fileName, T data)
    {
        string path = GetPath(fileName);

        string jsonString = JsonUtility.ToJson(data);

        using StreamWriter writer = new StreamWriter(path);

        writer.Write(jsonString);
    }

    public static T LoadData<T>(string fileName)
    {
         string path = GetPath(fileName);

         using StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(path);

         string json = reader.ReadToEnd();

         return JsonUtility.FromJson<T>(json);
    }

    public static bool FileExists(string fileName)
    {
        string path = GetPath(fileName);

        return File.Exists(path);
    }
}

Then, I have this container class to store the data. As it is generic, I can pass any class to it:

public class JsonDataUser<T>
{
    public T JsonData;

    private string jsonFileName;

    public void SaveData()
    {
        JsonDataManagement.SaveData<T>(jsonFileName, JsonData);
    }

    public JsonDataUser(T _StartJsonData, string _jsonFileName)
    {
        jsonFileName = _jsonFileName;

    /// <summary>
    /// Currently we only need to load the data once as the game begins
    /// This is why we do the loading here in the constructor and why
    /// we don't have a dedicated load method
    /// </summary>

    if (JsonDataManagement.FileExists(jsonFileName) == true)
    {
        JsonData = JsonDataManagement.LoadData<T>(jsonFileName);
    }

    else
    {
        JsonData = _StartJsonData;
    }
    }
}

Answer 1

JsonDataManagement

Since you can not enforce the consumer of your class to call FileExists before any other operation call that's why your current implementation is fragile.

I would suggest to make that method private and call it inside the SaveData and LoadData. Also if existence check fails then you should handle it. In my case I throw a FileNotFoundException but you might want to create the file on behalf of the user when the SaveData is called.

public class JsonDataManagement
{
    public static void SaveData<T>(string fileName, T data)
    {
        string path = GetPathAndCheckExistency(fileName);
        using var writer = new StreamWriter(path);
        writer.Write(JsonUtility.ToJson(data));
    }

    public static T LoadData<T>(string fileName)
    {
        string path = GetPathAndCheckExistency(fileName);
        using var reader = new StreamReader(path);
        return JsonUtility.FromJson<T>(reader.ReadToEnd());
    }

    private static string GetPathAndCheckExistency(string fileName)
    {
        var filePath = string.Join("", Application.persistentDataPath, Path.AltDirectorySeparatorChar, fileName);
        if (!File.Exists(filePath))
            throw new FileNotFoundException(message: "The provided file does not exist.", fileName: fileName);
        return filePath;
    }
}

JsonDataUser

I think this name is misleading with the User suffix. For me this functionality resembles to the memento design pattern, so callig the class JsonDataMemento might be a better idea.

I think you should not anticipate the filename from the class consumer. It should be an auto-generated name hidden from the consumer. But depending on the requirements it might make sense to expect that from the user.