Destroy All Children of Object

Question

Hello,

I can't get my head around this, I have a game empty called TextHolder. At times, this TextHolder is populated with text objects (via Instantiate), as children. I want to be able to get all the children (text objects) of the TextHolder and Destroy them when needed.

I don't want to cache them, as in adding them to an array whilst I Instantiate them, I want to be able to search the 'TextHolder' object for any children, and Destroy them:

 var allChildren = TextHolder.GetComponentsInChildren(Transform);
 for (var ac = 0; ac < allChildren.length; ac ++){ //var child : Transform in allChildren
     print("Removing old text modules");
     Destroy(allChildren[ac].gameObject);
 }

Although this doesn't actually do anything, its as if the TextHolder has no children.

What am I doing wrong here?

Answer 1

Best Answer

Answer by yatagarasu · Jan 08, 2014 at 03:46 PM

Hmm. Your code is too complex. I even don't know what it is intended to do. But maybt you should try transform instead of Transform Here is more compact working code.

 foreach (Transform child in TextHolder.transform) {
     GameObject.Destroy(child.gameObject);
 }

If TextHolder is an instance of an object, not class. If you want to simply remove all children of current object you can write

 foreach (Transform child in transform) {
     GameObject.Destroy(child.gameObject);
 }

or you can write extension method for Transform class and call it on objects transform you want to clear

 public static class TransformEx {
     public static Transform Clear(this Transform transform)
     {
         foreach (Transform child in transform) {
             GameObject.Destroy(child.gameObject);
         }
         return transform;
     }
 }

in your code myObject.transform.Clear();

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robertbu · Jan 08, 2014 at 04:05 PM 0

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yatagarasu · Jan 09, 2014 at 11:02 AM 0

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MorphVGX · Dec 29, 2014 at 06:06 PM 3

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fadden · May 01, 2016 at 01:40 AM 0

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IC_ · Jun 22, 2019 at 10:22 PM 1

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Answer 2

Answer by frogsbo · May 29, 2014 at 08:23 PM

in JS:

 var childs : int = transform.childCount;

 for (var i = childs - 1; i >= 0; i--)
 {
     Destroy(transform.GetChild(i).gameObject);
 }

in C:

 int childs = transform.childCount;

 for (int i = childs - 1; i > 0; i--)
 {
     GameObject.Destroy(transform.GetChild(i).gameObject);
 }

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Thompsan · Oct 18, 2014 at 10:39 PM 15

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StormMuller · Feb 18, 2018 at 07:55 PM 1

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Answer 3

Answer by normand · Aug 26, 2018 at 08:18 AM

So you create a tag just to delete your Objects like I did. But, like @frogsbo said it: work perfectly. Just don't forget to add = at i>0 just like @Thompsan mentioned.

     int childs = clone.transform.childCount;
     for (int i = childs - 1; i >= 0; i--) {
         GameObject.DestroyImmediate( clone.transform.GetChild( i ).gameObject );
         }

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tonytopper · Jan 13, 2021 at 10:13 PM 0

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Answer 4

Answer by rich2020 · Sep 23, 2016 at 12:15 PM

Because my objects are loaded via a Coroutine, the above examples as well as the typical approach of getting all GameObjects with a tag (using 'FindGameObjectsWithTag'), iterating over them and removing them, I used the following approach:

   public IEnumerator DoDeleteAll()
         {
             while (Holder.transform.childCount > 0)
             {
                 var items = GameObject.FindGameObjectsWithTag("YOUR_TAG");
                 foreach (var item in items)
                 {
                     Destroy(item );
                 }
                 yield return new WaitForSeconds(0.001f);
             }
         }

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Answer 5

Answer by FabDynamic · Oct 28, 2018 at 05:07 AM

For posterity I wanted to add here what worked for me:

 var children = new List<GameObject>();
 foreach (Transform child in transform) children.Add(child.gameObject);
 children.ForEach(child => Destroy(child));

I got that code from this forum post: https://forum.unity.com/threads/deleting-all-chidlren-of-an-object.92827/

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Destroy All Children of Object

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