itemmetadata-element-msbuild.md

title	ItemMetadata Element (MSBuild)
description	Learn about the MSBuild ItemMetadata element, which contains a user-defined item metadata key that has the metadata value.
ms.date	03/13/2017
ms.topic	reference
dev_langs	VB CSharp C++
helpviewer_keywords	ItemMetadata Element [MSBuild] <ItemMetadata> Element [MSBuild]
author	ghogen
ms.author	ghogen
ms.subservice	msbuild

ItemMetadata element (MSBuild)

Contains a user-defined item metadata key, which contains the item metadata value. An item may have any number of metadata key-value pairs.

<Project> <ItemGroup> <Item>

Syntax

<ItemMetadataName> Item Metadata value</ItemMetadataName>

Attributes and elements

The following sections describe attributes, child elements, and parent elements.

Attributes

Attribute	Description
Condition	Optional attribute. Condition to be evaluated. For more information, see Conditions.

Child elements

None.

Parent elements

Element	Description
Item	A user-defined element that defines the inputs for the build process.

Text value

A text value is optional.

This text specifies the item metadata value, which can be either text or XML.

Example

The following code example shows how to add Culture metadata with the value fr to the item CSFile.

<ItemGroup>
    <CSFile Include="main.cs" >
        <Culture>fr</Culture>
    </CSFile>
</ItemGroup>

See also

• Project file schema reference
• Items