Using Globalization and Localization in ASP.NET

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Introduction

This article is aimed at understanding how Globalization and Localization work in ASP.NET.

Background

A few days ago, I saw a TV commercial that said that "Even the smallest business can go multinational". This is very true specially in case of software business where guys operating from their store room provide services to users on the other side of the globe.

If we need our website to be designed in such a way that it caters to the need of users from across the planet, then perhaps it is a good idea to understand and implement Globalization and Localization in our application. ASP.NET framework makes it pretty easy to implement these features by providing a lot of boilerplate functionality to the developers.

Before starting, let's get these two terms straight. Globalization is the process of designing the application in such a way that it can be used by users from across the globe (multiple cultures). Localization, on the other hand, is the process of customization that we do to have our application behave as per current culture and locale. These two things go together.

Understanding Resource Files

Imagine a scenario where we have a web page with a lot of labels and text in it. Without ASP.NET globalization mechanism in place, if I have to render these labels and text based on current locale, then I might end up having a lot of switch cases or if statements. To be precise, one case for each supported language. Now this technique could work but it is time consuming, error prone and sometimes frustrating for the developer.

To avoid having to write such code, ASP.NET provides us Resource files. The resource files are like a central repository where we can keep all the text and the web pages can simply read this resource file and get their respective labels populated. The beauty here is that if we have to support multiple languages, then we can have a separate resource file for each language (containing text in respective languages) and at run time ASP.NET engine will pick the correct resource file based on users locale and culture.

There are two types of resources:

• Local Resources
• Global Resources

Local resources are the resources which are specific for a page, i.e., there will be local resource file for every page. Global resources and the resources that are common for the whole website, i.e., one resource file that can be accessed by all the pages (there can be multiple global resource files too).

Using the Code

Let us now create a test web page that we will be working on to understand. We have a simple page that displays a welcome message to the user using Label control, a label indicating the current date and finally a label for displaying today's date.

Right now, I am populating these labels at design time, but if I have to support multiple cultures then I will have to get them from a local resource file. Visual Studio provides a mechanism for creating the local resource file from a given web page. This can be done by viewing the page in design view and then "Tools->Generate Local Resources". This will create a App_LocalResources folder and generate a local resource file for this page and start taking the text values for all the labels from that resource file. (All Local resource files reside in App_LocalResources and all the global resource files are in App_GlobalResources folder.

If we look at the resource file, it contains text for all the controls of the page.

The controls inside the page are now using the resource file to get its contents:

<asp:Label ID="lblWelcome" runat="server" meta:resourcekey="lblWelcomeResource1">
</asp:Label>

Now we need to create the local resource files for this page so that the page will take the text from respective files based on current users culture. The format for having the multiple resource files for a page is: PageName.aspx.languageId-cultureId.resx. If the resource file for any laguage-culture combination is not found, then the default resource file will be taken.

If we want to display this web page in hindi-Indian, then we need a resource file Default.aspx.hi-in.resx.

Now if we run our page, we will not see any changes to test the changes. To test the changes, we need to set the default language of our browser to Hindi-Indian. I did that for my IE.

Now, when I run the page, the ASP.NET detects that user setting specifies language and region as Hindi and Indian respectively so it start pulling the text from our newly created resource file. If I do the same process for Spanish, then since the resource file for Spanish is not present, the default resource file will be taken. If we need support for Spanish, then we need to create a separate resource file for Spanish.

But it not a good idea to trust the users browser and system settings to get the culture specific information. It is always a good idea to provide the user an option to change the language and culture for the website. So let us provide the user with a dropdown where he can select the current language.

To accomplish this, what we need to do is to override the InitializeCulture function and set the UICulture to the user selected language.

protected override void InitializeCulture()
{
    if (Request.Form["DropDownList1"] != null)
    {
        UICulture = Request.Form["DropDownList1"];
    }
    base.InitializeCulture();
}

This will give the user an option to switch languages dynamically. But there is one thing to notice which I circled in red. The UI is displayed in Hindi but the date format is not in Indian format. To do that, we need to set the Culture to selected culture so that the date, currency and other region specific format settings will also take effect.

protected override void InitializeCulture()
{
    if (Request.Form["DropDownList1"] != null)
    {
    //for UI elements
        UICulture = Request.Form["DropDownList1"];

        //for region specific formatting
        Culture = Request.Form["DropDownList1"];
    }
    base.InitializeCulture();
}

Now we have a small web page that is capable of being displayed in English and Hindi. To sum up, it is important to understand that Resource file is the key to have globalization and localization. The Global resource files contains text that is common to all the pages in the website and any control from any page can be bound to it. Local resource file is page specific. We need separate resource file for each supported culture. It is always a good idea to have a default resource file too. Finally, we should never trust users browser settings and provide the "Language/Culture Change" option on our website too.

Points of Interest

There are few important things to be understood when we are targeting our website to multiple cultures. When we are targeting multiple cultures, we cannot assume anything about the structure and layout of web page. The reason these things are important is because translation for even small text in English could be very lengthy in other languages. So it is always a good idea to follow the standard guidelines when we implement globalization.

• No absolute positioning of controls
• Use fluid layout with forms
• No absolute size of controls
• Try to arrange controls in a table

I think, after this exercise, we can now start working on globalizing any website. It sure does take time to implement this stuff but ASP.NET relieves a lot of burden from the developer by providing some "must-have-always" functionality in place.

History

• 23 Feb 2012: Using Globalization and Localization in ASP.NET