Load all Texture2Ds in a folder

Question

How can I load all image assets in a particular folder in my XNA game? The textures are located in the content project like normal, but say instead of copying line after line for each new texture I add, the ability to load them all automatically.

Can you explain the "why" of why you want to do that? What is it you're trying to achieve? The answer below by @icaptan is correct, but it could be you're solving the wrong problem if we understood what exactly it is you're trying to do, we could point you in a better direction. — George Clingerman
I have many button images for my game and need a better way to load them than doing Texture2D BUTTONs and content.loads a million times (exaggeration, but looking at it it feels that way) — Cyral
You might be better off adding all of those button images to a single image. It's a more efficient way of working with images and would create a lot less content loads. But if you're really set on having tons of images then the answer given below by @icaptan will work just fine. I personally would recommend his first method. — George Clingerman
Ive seen many people use one image, any links about how to do it? — Cyral
Try using this wonderful tool by Nick Gravelyn, spritesheetpacker.codeplex.com. Load in all your button images and it will spit out both a well-packed sheet of images and a file which can be loaded into your application which defines the position of each image by a key. Learn how to implement a Dictionary and use it to store the keys and positions in a static part of your game. When you need a certain button, look up its key and get the region of your sheet you need to load the image from. More info on how to integrate with XNA is in the link at the bottom of the page. — A-Type

icaptan icaptan · Accepted Answer · 2012-02-19T14:01:19

Mainly there are two ways

1st : Rename your images from 1 to N, so that you can load images in a for loop such as

List<Texture2D> images = new List<Texture2D>();
string folderPath = "MyImages/";
for(int i= 0; i<Count; i++)
{
   try
   {
        images.Add(Content.Load<Texture2D>(folderPath + i.ToString));
   }
   catch
   {
        break;
   }
}

the code above works for specific count, you may change for iteration to while(true) incrementing i, the catch blog will break if there is not any images more.

or use this (put the static class in the namespace of your game-project, not under any sub-namespace folder) it would work. if you do not want to extend your Content than remove "this" from the function)

public static class MyExtension
{
        public static List<T> LoadListContent<T>(this ContentManager contentManager, string contentFolder)
        {
            DirectoryInfo dir = new DirectoryInfo(contentManager.RootDirectory + "/" + contentFolder);
            if (!dir.Exists)
                throw new DirectoryNotFoundException();
            List<T> result = new List<T>();

            FileInfo[] files = dir.GetFiles("*.*");
            foreach (FileInfo file in files)
            {
                result.Add(contentManager.Load<T>(contentFolder + "/" + file.Name.Split('.')[0]));
            }
            return result;
        }
}

This code has a problem if your real path's length will be greater than 256, the function will not work. So be careful.

Load all Texture2Ds in a folder

1 Answers