Wildcard Files

Introduction

FlatRedBall supports wildcard files in the .gluj file. At the time of this writing wildcard files are only supported in Global Content, but future versions of FlatRedBall may expand this. Wildcard enable the automatic adding of files to your FlatRedBall project based in their location on disk. This can make managing a large number of files much easier than manually managing the files.

Example: Using Wildcards to Add Texture PNG Files

The easiest way to add a Wildcard entry in the FlatRedBall is to first add a single file to your project which has all of the desired settings. For example, consider the following project which has a single file added to Global Content Files named TextureFile.png:

TextureFile.png in Global Content Files

Currently, wildcard entries must be manually added to the FlatRedBall project (.gluj). To do this:

1. Open the folder location of the project

   

   Click the Folder Icon to open the project's folder
2. Open your game's .gluj file in a text editor such as Visual Studio Code

   

   Right-click on the .gluj to see open options
3. Locate the file entry of the file in your project. It should appear under the GlobalFiles section.

   

   TextureFile.png in GlobalFiles in the project's .gluj
4. Change the file's Name property to be a wildcard file.

   

   Name changed to be a wildcard
5. Save the file in the text editor

After you save the file the FlatRedBall Editor displays the file with a wildcard (*) icon to indicate that it is added as a wildcard file.

File displayed as a wildcard file

Now you can add new files to disk and they will automatically appear in the FlatRedBall Editor (assuming they match the wildcard pattern.

Multiple files added using wildcards

Wildcards and Valid Names

Be careful - wildcard files are added automatically even if their name violates the naming convention of FlatRedBall. In other words, normally files cannot contain spaces or dashes, but FlatRedBall will add these files to your project even if the file names contain invalid characters. For example, if you copy and paste a file, Windows automatically appends " - Copy" to the name of the file, and this will appear in the FlatRedBall Editor.

The code generator will attempt to remove invalid characters when generating the GlobalContent code.

Of course, since characters are either removed (such as spaces) or converted to valid C# property characters (such as underscores), it is possible to have multiple properties with the same name which would result in a compile error. We recommend keeping your file names named as valid C# properties.

Valid Wildcard Patterns

FlatRedBall supports a number of wildcard patterns for adding files to your projects. The following examples explain the possible wildcard patterns:

• Name": "GlobalContent/*.png - Add all files in the GlobalContent folder with the PNG extension

• Name": "GlobalContent/*.* - Add all files in the GlobalContent folder with any extension

• Name": "GlobalContent/* - Add all files in the GlobalContent folder with any extension. Note that this is the same as Name": "GlobalContent/*.*.

• Name": "GlobalContent/**/*.png - Add all files in the GlobalContent folder and any subfolder of GlobalContent with the PNG extension

• Name": "GlobalContent/**/*.* - Add all files in the GlobalContent folder and any subfolder of GlobalContent with any extension

Wildcards and Explicit Additions

If a file is included explicitly and also through a wildcard, then the file will appear twice in the FRB Editor and this will produce an error. For example, consider a project with the file MyTexture.png added to the GlobalContent folder through a wildcard and also explicitly added. The JSON for the project might look like this:

    {
      "Name": "GlobalContent/MyTexture.png",
      "IsSharedStatic": true,
      "DestroyOnUnload": false,
      "HasPublicProperty": true,
      "RuntimeType": "Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Graphics.Texture2D",
      "ProjectsToExcludeFrom": []
    },
    {
      "Name": "GlobalContent/*.png",
      "IsSharedStatic": true,
      "DestroyOnUnload": false,
      "HasPublicProperty": true,
      "RuntimeType": "Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Graphics.Texture2D",
      "ProjectsToExcludeFrom": []
    }

This results in the file appearing twice in the FRB Editor, and in an error appearing in the Errors tab.

If wildcards are needed, then the explicitly-added file must be removed. It can be removed by editing the .gluj, or by removing it through the tree view in FRB. If your project needs an explicitly-added file while also using wildcards, then you must organize your content in such a way as to exclude the explicitly-added file from the wildcard pattern, such as by adding all wildcard files to a subfolder.