Modding:Modder Guide/APIs/Reflection

Creating SMAPI mods

---

• Get started
• Game fundamentals
• Test & troubleshoot
• Release
• API reference

  Basic SMAPI APIs:

  • Mod structure
  • Manifest
  • Events
  • Configuration
  • Load & edit content
  • Data
  • Input
  • Logging
  • Reflection
  • Multiplayer
  • Translation
  • Update checks
  • Utilities

  Advanced SMAPI APIs:

  • Content packs
  • Mod console commands
  • Mod integrations
  • Harmony patching

• Specific guides

← Modding:Index

The reflection API lets you access fields, properties, or methods you otherwise couldn't access. You can use it from helper.Reflection in your entry method, or this.Helper.Reflection elsewhere in your entry class.

Intro

Reflection is a powerful C# feature which lets code analyse and interact with code. SMAPI provides a simplified reflection API focused on accessing private game fields, properties, and methods. SMAPI will automatically handle validation, caching, and performance optimisation.

Basic reflection

Overview

SMAPI provides three overloaded methods to access code: GetField, GetProperty, and GetMethod. Each one takes three arguments:

argument	purpose
obj or type	The instance (or type if static) which has the private field/property/method you want to access.
name	The name of the private field/property/method.
required	Whether to throw a descriptive exception if the field/property/method isn't found. Default true. If set to false, it will return null instead and you should validate it yourself.

Each method returns an object you can use to interact further with it — like getting or setting the field/property value, or invoking the method.

Fields and properties

GetField and GetProperty are used the same way. Both return an object with two methods: GetValue returns the current field/property value, and SetValue overrides their value.

You can get the value directly:

// get value of instance field
bool wasPet = this.Helper.Reflection.GetField<bool>(pet, "wasPetToday").GetValue();

Or you can keep a reference to the reflection data, and change the value separately:

// set value of static field
IReflectedField<int> soundTimer = this.Helper.Reflection.GetField<int>(typeof(Junimo), "soundTimer");
soundTimer.SetValue(100);

If you need to access the field/property repeatedly, keeping the reflection object will improve performance.

Methods

GetMethod returns an object with one overloaded method. The Invoke comes in two forms:

• Invoke() calls a method with no return value.
• Invoke<T>() calls a method which returns a value, where T is the expected return type.

For example, this calls the private TV.getFortuneForecast method and stores the value it returns:

string forecast = this.Helper.Reflection
   .GetMethod(new TV(), "getFortuneForecast")
   .Invoke<string>();

If the method expects arguments, you can just add those to the Invoke method:

Vector2 spawnTile = new Vector2(25, 25);
this.helper.Reflection
   .GetMethod(Game1.getFarm(), "doSpawnCrow")
   .Invoke(spawnTile);

Advanced reflection

If you need to do more, you can access the underlying C# reflection types:

FieldInfo field = this.Helper.Reflection.GetField<string>(…).FieldInfo;
MethodInfo method = this.Helper.Reflection.GetMethod(…).MethodInfo;

Or even use C# reflection directly. Note that SMAPI adds caching and optimisations which you'll need to handle yourself if you do this.