Succinct way to get entity ID/version?

[Net5F]

Heyo, I saw that registry.entity()/version() were removed and replaced with entt_traits::to_entity()/to_version(). I see that they work, but the way I'm calling them seems a bit verbose. Not a big deal since I can alias them myself, but I just wanted to check, is there a more succinct way to call them than this?

entt::entt_traits<entt::entity>::to_entity(entity);

[skypjack]

Yeah, they were removed because you don't have to create a registry nor to include it to be able to use the storage class.
There is actually no succint way to do it. The best we can do is to turn it into the basic_entt_traits vs entt_traits model already in use in the rest of the codebase.
This way, for the default entity type you would have: entt::entt_traits::to_entity(entity);.

[Net5F]

Cool, thanks for the info!

[skypjack]

You're welcome. If you find one of my suggestions viable, feel free to continue the discussion here or to open an issue so that I won't forget about it. 😅

[skypjack]

Or we could add an entt::to_entity function similar to entt::to_integral... 🤔

[Net5F]

Something like that would be really nice. I think entt::to_entity is already taken by the "get an entity ID given a registry and component" function though, no?

const auto entity = entt::to_entity(registry, position);

Maybe a terminology change is warranted to get away from both "the entity ID, with the version" and "the entity ID, without the version" being called "entity"? They're very close to the same thing, so it's hard to say. Maybe entt::to_base_entity or something? Another option would be to just refer to it in regards to the version, ala entt::without_version or entt::strip_version.

[skypjack]

Yeah, it's too late to rename entt::entity to entt::identifier. 😅
We can also overload entt::to_entity and let it be. Though, I can see how name clashing can be annoying in this case.
Otherwise, we could rename the extended to_entity into to_identifier, since that's what it returns.
Dunno, naming things is hard, you know... 🙂 I'm open to suggestions.

[Net5F]

Naming things is definitely hard, especially when they're such close concepts haha.
Having the full ID + version be the "entity" concept, and the individual parts be "identifier" and "version" seems reasonable to me. Would renaming to entt_traits::to_identifier along with a entt::to_identifier and entt::to_version be an option?

[skypjack]

We have a winner from Discord. 😅
What if we renamed entt::to_entity to entt::to_id, then added entt::to_entity and entt::to_version to mimic the same names from entt_traits?
Just ignore the breaking change for a moment. It's an easy one on a rarely used function and we already have a goo ìd amount of breaking changes planned for the next version, so... 🤷‍♂️

[Net5F]

Sounds good to me!