Customizing the name of embedded resources in .NET

When you use embedded resources in a .NET project, the resource name is computed from the file's path. By default, it follows the format <Assembly Name>.<File Path>, where path separators (/ or \) are replaced with dots (.). For example, the resource name for resources/index.html becomes MyAwesomeProject.resources.index.html. This makes it difficult to build a virtual file system from embedded resources, since naming conflicts can arise.

<Project>
    <ItemGroup>
        <EmbeddedResource Include="resources\index.html" />
    </ItemGroup>
</project>

You can list the embedded resources using the GetManifestResourceNames method of the Assembly class.

foreach(var name in Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().GetManifestResourceNames())
{
    Console.WriteLine(name);
}

You can change the mapping using the LogicalName attribute.

<Project>
  <ItemGroup>
    <EmbeddedResource Include="Resources/**/*">
      <LogicalName>$([System.String]::new('%(RelativeDir)').Replace('\','/'))%(FileName)%(Extension)</LogicalName>
    </EmbeddedResource>
  </ItemGroup>
</Project>

If you run the previous code, the resource names will be different:

With this mapping, building a virtual file system from embedded resources becomes much easier, since the resource names directly reflect the actual file hierarchy.

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