Showing posts with label mvc. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mvc. Show all posts

Reading Notes #129

OlympicsSuggestion of the week


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Reading Notes #128

Suggestion of the week

  • What is Windows Azure? - This post gives the definition of Azure that is short enough to be said in one breath.

Cloud

Programming

Miscellaneous



Localization from url with Asp.Net MVC 4



To offer a website in multiple languages using ASP.Net we simply need to add some resource.resx files to our project and voilà. Based on the language of the browser, IIS will match the localization resource. However, what if we want to give the choice to the user?

The goal

One pattern often used to achieve this, is to split the resource based on the URL.

Ex:
http://www.DomainName.com/EN/About for the English path
http://www.DomainName.com/FR/About for the French path

The needs

We will need something to grab the desired language from the URL and set it as the current language.

The Solution

First, let's add a new route. Asp.Net uses routing to parse the URL and to extract information from it, while keeping the displayed URL more user friendly. The default route is {controller}/{action}/{id}. So without a new route, our language will be treated as a Controller name; but that’s no good.
The route we want is {lang}/{controller}/{action}/{id}. We could just replace the default, but then what would happen to "normal" calls?

The best thing to do is to add our localized route first and keep the default second. The way the routing works, it will use the first route that matches. Since we will use the two-letter code for chosen language, lets add the first part {lang}, which must be two characters long to be considered valid. You can see this in the code where I define a constraint using the following Regex: "^[a-zA-Z]{2}$".

Class_RouteConfig
Now that we have the language, we must change the user interface culture of the current thread. I decided to use an Attribute, making it easy to use. Under the Filter folder add a new class which inherits from ActionFilterAttribute. This method will check if "lang" is available from RouteData. If lang is present it will change the currentUICulture of the current thread. If "lang" is not part of the URL, then it will set it to the default.

Class_LocalizationAttribute

We could put the [Localization] attribute on all controller classes, but a best practice is to create a BaseController class and use it there.

Class_BaseController

Voilà, you can now change the language of the entire website by changing the URL.

Bonus: Use it everywhere


To use it in the view and the controller it's easy; just add the namespace and just type Resources.NameOfYourResourceString.
To use it in the validation and the generated code from the model, we could use something like this:

Class_PersonModel

This way, in the view, the code will still stay clean and simple.

@Html.LabelFor(model.UserName)

I hope this post helps you in your development efforts. Any comments, suggestions and/or questions are welcome.
 

~Frank



Reading Notes #114

Suggestion of the week

Cloud

Database

Programming

UX

Miscellaneous


~Frank


Reading Notes #113

 

pumpkin_CloudSuggestion of the week

Cloud

Programming

Database

Architecture

Miscellaneous

~Frank


Reading Notes #112

http://visualstudiowallpapers.com/image/53341361070Suggestion of the week

Cloud

Programming

Miscellaneous

~Frank


Reading Notes #109

 

WP_20130928_004Suggestion of the week


Cloud


Programming


Database

Miscellaneous


~Frank


Reading Notes #108

powershell

Suggestion of the week


Cloud


Programming


Miscellaneous

~ Frank


Reading Notes #106

WP_20130908_002Suggestion of the week


Cloud


Databases


Programming


Integration


Miscellaneous


~Frank


Reading Notes #103

4456.073113_2017_Architectur8

Suggestion of the week

Cloud

Programming

Databases

Miscellaneous

~Frank


Reading Notes #99

New-And-Improved
 Suggestion of the week

Cloud

Programming

Databases

User eXperience (UX)

Miscellaneous


~Frank






Reading Notes #61

ninja_solo
 
[This week, the image is provided by Marc Gagné @marc_gagne, a Windows Azure Ninja.]
Cloud

Programming

Miscellaneous





Reading Notes #40

Cloud


    Programming


      Miscellaneous


      ~ Frank