Unreal Engine 5 Documentation has been moved to the Epic Developer Community

Events are very similar to multi-cast delegates . However, while any class can bind events, only the class that declares the event may invoke the event's Broadcast , IsBound , and Clear functions. This means event objects can be exposed in a public interface without worrying about giving external classes access to these sensitive functions. Event use cases include including callbacks in purely abstract classes, and restricting external classes from invoking the Broadcast , IsBound , and Clear functions.

Declaring Events

Events are declared in almost the same manner as you declare multi-cast delegates except they use the macro variations specific to events.

Binding Events

Binding of events is performed in the same manner as binding multi-cast delegates .

Event Execution

Events allow you to attach multiple function delegates, then execute them all at once by calling the event's Broadcast() function. Event signatures are not allowed to use a return value. For events, Broadcast() can only be called by the class which defines them.

It is always safe to call Broadcast() on an event, even if nothing is bound. The only time you need to be careful is if you are using an event to initialize output variables, which is generally very bad to do.

The execution order of bound functions when calling Broadcast() is not defined. It may not be in the order the functions were added.

Implementation Examples

Simple Event

public:
/** Broadcasts whenever the layer changes */
DECLARE_EVENT( FLayerViewModel, FChangedEvent )
FChangedEvent& OnChanged() { return ChangedEvent; }

private:
/** Broadcasts whenever the layer changes */
FChangedEvent ChangedEvent;

Inherited Abstract Event

Base Class Implementation:

/** Register/Unregister a callback for when assets are added to the registry */
DECLARE_EVENT_OneParam( IAssetRegistry, FAssetAddedEvent, const FAssetData&);
virtual FAseetAddedEvent& OnAssetAdded() = 0;

Derived Class Implementation:

DECLARE_DERIVED_EVENT( FAssetRegistry, IAssetRegistry::FAssetAddedEvent, FAssetAddedEvent);
virtual FassetAddedEvent& OnAssetAdded() override { return AssetAddedEvent; }

Inherited Event

A derived class does not inherit access to a base class's sensitive event members. Instead, base classes with the intent to allow derived classes to broadcast their events will need to expose a protected Broadcast function for the event.

Base Class:

public:
/** Broadcasts whenever the layer changes */
DECLARE_EVENT( FLayerViewModel, FChangedEvent )
FChangedEvent& OnChanged() { return ChangedEvent; }

protected:
void BroadcastChanged()
{
    ChangedEvent.Broadcast();
}

private:
/** Broadcasts whenever the layer changes */
FChangedEvent ChangedEvent;