Allow users to read / write from all components of a given entity using an All WorldQuery types

[alice-i-cecile]

What problem does this solve or what need does it fill?

From time to time, users want to fetch all of the components from a given set of entities.

To do so, they must use the EntityRef or EntityMut API, in an exclusive system.

Fundamentally though, there's no reason this must be done in an exclusive system: this does not impact resource data, and we can limit the archetypes affected when combined with query filters.

What solution would you like?

Create a All type that parallels the API of EntityRef.

This would enable users to write e.g. Query<&All, With<Networked>> in an ordinary system, allowing them to read from any component of the given entity.

This will require some interesting new logic around defining which fetches are needed, but should be relatively straightforward.

Alternatives considered

Initially, I thought we could use EntityRef and EntityMut for this by implementing the WorldQuery trait on them directly. However, EntityMut allows users to add components, which cannot be done in parallel due to the potential impacts on archetypes.

Without the ability to reuse the APIs, IMO it makes more sense just to create a new type and use the standard & vs &mut distinction.

Alternatively alternatively, we could instead use one of the more 🧪 ideas to allow for instant component addition / removals in parallel systems and then just use EntityRef and EntityMut, likely by deferring the archetype updates until the next sync point and storing new component data in a scratch space of sorts.

[james7132]

You can sort of do this with ReflectComponent, though this both requires Reflect impls, still requires an exclusive system, and is mostly for the dynamic case where the types are not known at compile time. However, I'm not sure what kind of use case for AllComponents would work where we know the types at compile time that isn't served by generic systems and the existing query type.

[alice-i-cecile]

Agreed, this would be dramatically more useful after we have dynamic components.

[maniwani]

This will require some interesting new logic around defining which fetches are needed, but should be relatively straightforward.

Pretty sure the only thing this query can return is the de-powered version of EntityRef/Mut.

The type system doesn't allow queries to yield a mix of different component fetch tuples.

[mockersf]

This would enable users to write e.g. Query<&AllComponents, With<Networked>> in an ordinary system, allowing them to read from any component of the given entity.

Could you expand on how that would be used?

fn my_system(
    query: Query<&AllComponents, With<Networked>>
) {
    for all_components in query.iter() {
        // how do you use this all_components?
    }
}

Without going full dynamic, you'll need to provide the concrete component type, so why not put it in the query anyway?

[maniwani]

Maybe we trade concurrency for ergonomics and provide this as a separate SystemParam that just doesn't block resources.

fn my_system(
    mut all: AllComponentsMut,
) {
    for (mut a, b) in all.query::<(&mut A, &B)>() {
        /* ... */
    }
}

[alice-i-cecile]

Maybe we trade concurrency for ergonomics and provide this as a separate SystemParam that just doesn't block resources.

This is better than nothing, but IMO the ability to additionally filter this down based on specific components is an important usability win. In most of the cases I can foresee (networking, saving), you're going to want to restrict this based on the presence or absence of a marker component.

[james7132]

This still doesn't give mutable access to Entity components yet. We need a version of EntityMut that doesn't give access to structural mutations first.