How to cast Slate widgets in Unreal Engine

This brief article addresses the question of how to cast one Slate widget to another in Unreal Engine. Imagine you have an SWidget widget wrapped in a shared pointer like this:

TSharedPtr<SWidget> MyWidgetPtr;

If you want to cast it, for example, to an SSpacer, your code might look like this:

TSharedPtr<SSpacer> MySpacerPtr = StaticCastSharedPtr<SSpacer>(MyWidgetPtr);

It’s important to keep in mind that you should verify whether the shared pointer is valid before using it.

The same approach works for shared references:

TSharedRef<SWidget> MyWidgetRef;
TSharedRef<SSpacer> MySpacerRef = StaticCastSharedRef<SSpacer>(MyWidgetRef);

Alternatively, you can perform the casts manually, directly using static_cast or dynamic_cast with the widget. However, be aware that this approach may not be as reliable as the one provided above, so use it with caution.