Overview

This is a repository preserving example code by Nick Gravelyn did some blog post on XNA in the Microsoft Docs. As long as it's there, the original post can be found in the Microsoft Docs Blog Archive. Originally there was no license included. By mail and in this issue at MerjTek's WPF integration he kindly answered the code may be considered MIT or Microsoft Public License, so I put it here under MIT.

This repository allows for using the code without legal concerns which may occur with the missing license in the blog post.

Example Code

There was more example code included in the blogpost, which is preserved here.

Example 1

 // What importers or processors should we load?
private const string xnaVersion = 
    ", Version=4.0.0.0, PublicKeyToken=6d5c3888ef60e27d";
private static readonly string[] pipelineAssemblies =
{
    "Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Content.Pipeline.AudioImporters" + xnaVersion,
    "Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Content.Pipeline.EffectImporter" + xnaVersion,
    "Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Content.Pipeline.FBXImporter" + xnaVersion,
    "Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Content.Pipeline.TextureImporter" + xnaVersion,
    "Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Content.Pipeline.VideoImporters" + xnaVersion,
    "Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Content.Pipeline.XImporter" + xnaVersion,
};

Example 2

using Microsoft.Build.Evaluation;

Example 3

// MSBuild objects used to dynamically build content.
private ProjectCollection projectCollection;
private Project msBuildProject;

Example 4

/// <summary>
/// Creates a temporary MSBuild content project in memory.
/// </summary>
void CreateBuildProject()
{
    string projectPath = 
        Path.Combine(buildDirectory, "content.contentproj");
    string outputPath = Path.Combine(buildDirectory, "bin");

    // Create the project collection
    projectCollection = new ProjectCollection();

    // Hook up our custom error logger.
    errorLogger = new ErrorLogger();
    projectCollection.RegisterLogger(errorLogger);

    // Create the build project.
    msBuildProject = new Project(projectCollection);
    msBuildProject.FullPath = projectPath;

    // set up the properties we care about
    msBuildProject.SetProperty("XnaPlatform", "Windows");
    msBuildProject.SetProperty("XnaFrameworkVersion", "v4.0");
    msBuildProject.SetProperty("XnaProfile", "HiDef");
    msBuildProject.SetProperty("Configuration", "Release");
    msBuildProject.SetProperty("OutputPath", outputPath);

    // Register any custom importers or processors.
    foreach (string pipelineAssembly in pipelineAssemblies)
    {
        msBuildProject.AddItem("Reference", pipelineAssembly);
    }

    // Include the standard targets file that defines
    // how to build XNA Framework content.
    msBuildProject.Xml.AddImport(
        "$(MSBuildExtensionsPath)\\Microsoft\\XNA Game Studio\\v4.0\\" +
        "Microsoft.Xna.GameStudio.ContentPipeline.targets");
}

Example 5

/// <summary>
/// Adds a new content file to the MSBuild project. The importer and
/// processor are optional: if you leave the importer null, it will
/// be autodetected based on the file extension, and if you leave the
/// processor null, data will be passed through without any processing.
/// </summary>
public void Add(
    string filename, string name, 
    string importer, string processor)
{
    // set up the metadata for this item
    var metadata = new SortedList<string,string>();
    metadata.Add("Link", Path.GetFileName(filename));
    metadata.Add("Name", name);

    if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(importer))
        metadata.Add("Importer", importer);

    if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(processor))
        metadata.Add("Processor", processor);

    // add the item
    msBuildProject.AddItem("Compile", filename, metadata);
}

Example 6

/// <summary>
/// Removes all content files from the MSBuild project.
/// </summary>
public void Clear()
{
    // select all compiled objects in the project and remove them
    var compileObjects = from i in project.Items 
                         where i.ItemType == "Compile" 
                         select i;
    project.RemoveItems(compileObjects);
}