Companion File

A companion file is used during the build process to obtain the topic title and link text for a particular conceptual topic. There will be one companion file for each conceptual content topic.

  Note

If using a build tool such as the Sandcastle Help File Builder, the companion files are created for you automatically as part of the build process and you do not need to maintain them yourself.

Companion File Format

Below is an example of a companion file.

Example Companion File
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<metadata>
  <topic id="303c996a-2911-4c08-b492-6496c82b3edb">
    <title>Welcome to the Sandcastle MAML Guide</title>
    <linkText>Welcome page</linkText>
  </topic>
</metadata>

The file consists of a root metadata node that contains one topic node with an id attribute that refers to the topic's GUID.

The title element is required and contains the title to use for the topic. This will be used as the default link text. In cases where the title is not appropriate or is too long for link text and you use the topic in a link frequently, you can specify a linkText element that contains different text to use for the link. Note that if a link element has inner text specified in the topic, it will always be used instead of the values from the companion file.

See Also