AActor::GetComponents

function Engine Since 4.0

#include "GameFramework/Actor.h"

Access: public Specifiers: const

Description

Fills OutComponents with all owned components of type T (or all components when called with a UActorComponent* array). A no-arg const overload returns a direct reference to the internal TSet to avoid any allocation.

Caveats & Gotchas

• Use `TInlineComponentArray<UPrimitiveComponent*>` instead of a plain TArray to avoid heap allocation for actors with only a handful of components: `TInlineComponentArray<UPrimitiveComponent*> Prims(this);`
• The zero-argument overload (`const TSet<UActorComponent*>& GetComponents() const`) returns a raw reference to the internal set. The comment in the header warns that anything changing component ownership or destroying a component invalidates this reference — do not store it across frames.
• Blueprint equivalent is `K2_GetComponentsByClass`. Use that node in Blueprints; `GetComponents` is C++ only.

Signature

template<class T, class AllocatorType> void GetComponents(TArray<T*, AllocatorType>& OutComponents, bool bIncludeFromChildActors = false) const

Parameters

Name	Type	Description	Default
OutComponents	TArray<T*, AllocatorType>&	Output array that will be reset and filled with all matching components.	—
bIncludeFromChildActors	bool	If true, also include components from nested ChildActor components.	false

Return Type

void

Example

Collect all mesh components C++

TInlineComponentArray<UStaticMeshComponent*> Meshes(this);
// Meshes is now populated — no heap allocation for typical actor component counts
for (UStaticMeshComponent* Mesh : Meshes)
{
    Mesh->SetCastShadow(false);
}

Version History

Introduced in: 4.0

Version	Status	Notes
5.6	stable	—

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