How does ContentTypeReader determine if your file is the class or whatever it's been templatized to read in?

 

For example.

 

Class pie {

int cake;

int cookie;

}

 

class myreader : ContentypeReader<Cookie>

 

ok so how can I create files of type pie so that ContentTypeReader is used to read them?

Oh wait is this reader only supposed to read things created by ContentTypeWriter?

Sucka234:

Oh wait is this reader only supposed to read things created by ContentTypeWriter?

Correct.  The ContentTypeReader<>'s are used to read content from XNB files, which are created at compile-time using ContentTypeWriter<>'s.

In the content pipeline, you have an importer and the processor, which read and translate your data, respectively.  The "output" type of the content processor, let's call it MyType, is written to the XNB file, using a class derived from ContentTypeWriter<MyType>.  At run-time, a call to Content.Load<MyType>(...) internally finds your class derived from ContentTypeReader<MyType> (which was actually defined in the ContentTypeWriter<MyType> class and stored in the XNB file as a class/assembly name) and uses it to parse the internals of the XNB file.  The XNB format itself is proprietary.

Awesome thanks. Slowly learning :)

If you're interested in learning about the content pipeline, this is a good starting point: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb447745.aspx. It gives you a nice over-view of how the system was architected and how all the pieces fit together. It also links to more specific pages you can use when actually developing you content pipeline classes.

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Nick Gravelyn -- Microsoft XNA MVP
XNA Wiki | Zune Games