Adding an XML file to your XNA project

Question

I'm creating an XNA game. I've made it so I can specify all the level details in an XML file which is then de-serialized and used to set up the level details.

At the moment, it's just referencing a file on my computer - my question is, how do I reference this more generically?

Adding the xml in my content folder created a multitude of complaints about schemas and such like, which made me think that likely wasn't the correct route.

Any suggestions?

I tried removing all the entries from the XNA, this gives:

Attempt to access the method failed: System.IO.StreamReader..ctor(System.String)

EDIT:

The xml:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?>
<XnaContent>
  <Asset Type = "RDrop.Level[]">
  <Item>
    (stuff)
  </Item>
  <Item>
    (stuff)   
  </Item>
  </Asset>
</XnaContent>

EDIT:

I've started a new windows phone project - the previous one wasn't one. I've copied everything over and added "dataTypes" ala this tutorial:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff604979.aspx

Game project references -> content, MyDataTypes. Content references -> MyDataTypes.

The XML is as is in previous edit and is contained in the content folder via Add-> Existing Item-> Level.XML.

Any ideas?

I think you can get more answers on this subject on gamedev.stackexchange.com — Ricardo Souza
Having re-read this a couple of times I'm not seeing anything that is XNA/game specific. This is just a question about de-serialising some XML. — Kev
@Kev This is XnaContent - it's supposed to be built into binary data by the XNA content pipeline's XmlImporter. (As per Robert's answer.) — Andrew Russell
Joshua, would you like me to migrate this over to our games dev site, you might get betters eyes on this question? — Kev
Robert seems to be on the right track here - though I seem to have opened a can of worms trying to shoe horn this in. — Joshua Mee

Robert Robert · Accepted Answer · 2012-09-18T21:21:14

You can leave the build action as "Compile". One method to do what you want is the following:

Create a class that the xml is going to be describing. Example: Level.cs

Then structure your xml file like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?>
<XnaContent>
    <Asset Type="The_Level_class_namespace.Level">
        <Property1>Value</Property1>
        <Property2>Value</Property2>
        <Property3>Value</Property3>
        <Property4>Value</Property4>
    </Asset>
</XnaContent>

if you want the xml to describe an array of objects you can do structure the xml like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?>
<XnaContent>
    <Asset Type="The_Level_class_namespace.Level[]">
        <Item>
            <Property1>Value</Property1>
            <Property2>Value</Property2>
            <Property3>Value</Property3>
            <Property4>Value</Property4>
        </Item>
    </Asset>
</XnaContent>

From there you just need to make sure your values are in the proper format. For example a vector2 object would be like this:

<Vector2Property>x_value y_value</Vector2Property>

Make sure that your content project references the game project or library project.

Hope this helps :)

Adding an XML file to your XNA project

2 Answers