Datamodel.NET is a CLR library which implements the Datamodel structure and Datamodel Exchange file format.

Datamodel is a strongly-typed generic data structure designed by Valve Corporation for use in their games. Datamodel Exchange is a Datamodel container file format with multiple possible encodings; binary and ASCII ("keyvalues2") are included.

Datamodel Attributes

The following CLR types are supported as Datamodel attributes:

• int
• float
• bool
• string
• byte
• byte[]
• ulong
• System.TimeSpan
• System.Drawing.Color

Additionally, the following Datamodel.NET types are supported:

• Element (a named collection of attributes)
• Vector2
• Vector3 / Angle
• Vector4 / Quaternion
• Matrix (4x4)

IList<T> collections of the above types are also supported. (This can be a bit confusing given that both byte and byte[] are valid attribute types; use the ByteArray type if you run into trouble.)

Datamodel.NET features

• Threaded, thread-safe
• Support for all known versions of Valve's binary and keyvalues2 DMX encodings
• Convenient IEnumerable, INotifyPropertyChanged and INotifyCollectionChanged implementations
• Supports partial trust
• Supports XAML
• Inline documentation
• Binary codec supports just-in-time attribute loading
• Write your own codecs with the ICodec interface

Data Binding

You can bind to an attribute as if it were a property of the host element, e.g. {Binding MyElement.Hello}. If an attribute's name collides with a statically-defined property of Element then use indexer syntax instead, e.g. {Binding MyElement[Owner]}.

ObservableAttribute

In order to correctly implement IDictionary, attributes are exposed as KeyValuePair objects. Since these aren't great for data binding the utility type ObservableAttribute is provided.

ObservableAttribute will automatically wrap its descendants. For further binding convenience it will also wrap array items, generating an index-based label in place of an attribute key for each.

An IValueConverter class is provided in a comment block at the start of ObservableAttribute's class definition.

Quick example

var HelloWorld = new Datamodel.Datamodel("helloworld", 1); // must provide a format name (can be anything) and version

HelloWorld.Root = new Datamodel.Element(HelloWorld, "my_root");
HelloWorld.Root["Hello"] = "World"; // any supported attribute type can be assigned

var MyString = HelloWorld.Root.Get<string>("Hello");

HelloWorld.Save("hello world.dmx", "keyvalues2", 1); // must provide an encoding name and version

<Datamodel Format="helloworld" FormatVersion="1">
    <Datamodel.Root>
        <Element Name="my_root">
            <sys:String x:Key="Hello">World</sys:String>
        </Element>
    </Datamodel.Root>
</Datamodel>