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

Additionally, the following Datamodel.NET types are supported:

• Element (a named collection of attributes)
• Vector2
• Vector3 / QAngle
• 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
• Inline documentation
• Binary codec supports just-in-time attribute loading
• Write your own codecs with the ICodec interface
• Support for property based attributes, Datamodel.Element subclassing (serialize only)

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

<--! dmx encoding keyvalues2 1 format helloworld 1>
{
    "Hello" "string" "World"
}