In case you are having saving issues "Graph is linked to external private object" from creating objects in data assets

Development Programming & Scripting
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1

I’m creating this thread (mainly for future me, but for anybody else unfortunate enough to get this issue) just to give ways about how I solved this issue (well, twice).

Problem:
I created a UObject on runtime for one of the variables in a C++ data asset. I created a data asset from that in the editor, saved, duplicated it and renamed it, and tried to save again. I wasn’t allowed to save due to getting an error about “Graph is linked to external private object”.

Solutions:

  1. In my first occurence, in the initializer, i was creating it like so:
MyCreatedObject = NewObject<UMyObject>(this,DesiredObjectClass.Get());

Don’t do that, this resulted in the object not being able to handle deep duplication of said data asset.

Instead, do this:

MyCreatedObject= Cast<UMyObject>(ObjectInitializer.CreateDefaultSubobject(this, TEXT("MyCreatedObject"), DesiredObjectClass.Get(), DesiredObjectClass.Get()));

And ensure that the constructor is from the ObjectInitializer, like so:

UMyDataAsset::UMyDataAsset(const FObjectInitializer& ObjectInitializer)
	:Super(ObjectInitializer)
{
MyCreatedObject = Cast<UMyObject>(ObjectInitializer.CreateDefaultSubobject(this, TEXT("MyCreatedObject"), DesiredObjectClass.Get(), DesiredObjectClass.Get()));
}

Note: THIS ONLY WORKS IN THE INITIALIZER.

  1. In my second occurence, it wasn’t in the initializer (it was in the PostEditChangeProperty function) , and was like so:
MyOtherCreatedObject = NewObject<UMyOtherObject>(GetOuter(),OtherDesiredObjectClass.Get());

Don’t do this, the outer ends up being incorrect. However, since you’re not in the initializer, you can’t use the above method.
The actual issue is the GetOuter, I should be using GetOutermostObject, like this:

MyOtherCreatedObject = NewObject<UMyOtherObject>(GetOutermostObject(),OtherDesiredObjectClass.Get());

I’ll be honest and say I’m not 100% certain about the exact reasons why this occurs (i’m still very new to C++ in UE), but I couldn’t find any answers online about this and it was really frustrating, so hopefully this would help anybody else in the same situation (or maybe me in the future if i forget again).

Also small note, people have been talking about using NewNamedObject, and even the official documentation mentions this.
I’M PRETTY CERTAIN THIS DOES NOT EXIST IN 5.2.0 (and I doubt in the future releases as well). I tried searching the entire solution and online and couldn’t find out what file to include to make it work.