How to make a field visible (attachable) in the inspector but inaccessible through code (private-like)?

Question

Let's say I have a variable named button of type Button which is of course System.Serializable.

I want that variable to be assignable through the inspector, so I make it public:

public class SomeScript : MonoBehaviour{
    public Button button;
}

Which gives me that:

Now, I want to keep the code clean & secure (organized) and there's a real reason why I need to preserve the encapsulation.

I know that there are multiple ways of retrieving components on runtime like transform.Find("Some/Genius/TypeUnsafe/Path") or GameObject.Find("3 seconds scene iteration").GetComponent(...). I want to avoid that.

How do I mix a variable private access with it's public access in the inspector?

Answer 1

You're looking for the SerializeField Attribute

From the docs:

Force Unity to serialize a private field.

You will almost never need this. When Unity serializes your scripts, it will only serialize public fields. If in addition to that you also want Unity to serialize one of your private fields you can add the SerializeField attribute to the field.

Your code would then look like this:

public class SomeScript : MonoBehaviour{
    [SerializeField]
    private Button button;
}

Answer 2

You can show your private variable By adding SerializeField attribute before the variable. Something like this

[SerializeField]
private Button button;

The above variable will be displayed to your inspector but your other classes will unable to get it. Conversely you can also hide your public filed in inspector through HideInInspector attribute. Something like this

[HideInInspector]
public Button button;

Your above variable will be accessible by your other script but it will not be displayed to inspector.