The AssetDatabase class has methods that allow you to access and perform operations on assets in the same way the Unity Editor does. You can create, import, delete, copy, move, load, and save assets, and search the asset database.
This means you can create anything from simple adjustments to powerful tools and customizations to your project’s asset workflow, using Unity’s Editor scripting and Editor window customization.
For the full list of methods available, and documentation for each of the methods, refer to the AssetDatabase API reference.
You can use batching to save time when making changes to assets from code. If you make changes to multiple assets, the Asset Database’s default behavior is to process each change in turn, and perform a full refresh process for the asset before moving on to the next line of code.
The following example changes three assets, copying Asset1, moving Asset2, and deleting Asset3:
AssetDatabase.CopyAsset("Assets/Asset1.txt", "Assets/Text/Asset1.txt");
AssetDatabase.MoveAsset("Assets/Asset2.txt", "Assets/Text/Asset2.txt");
AssetDatabase.DeleteAsset("Assets/Asset3.txt");
Without batching, Unity processes each change before moving on to the next line of code. This takes an unnecessarily long time and triggers many callbacks.
To save time you can use the AssetDatabase APIs to pause automatic asset importing, define a series of asset operations in your code, and then resume automatic importing. On resumption, the Asset Database processes your defined asset operations as a batch, which is faster than processing them one by one.
For more details and an example implementation, refer to the