ASP.NET MVC I18n – Part 5: Imperative View Localization

This is going to be a simple one…

Note: This post is part of a series…

The most simple way to accommodate different languages is by direct, imperative coding. E.g. images can be localized by maintaining the region as part of the filename and appending it via code. So, let’s make our language switcher from earlier a little nicer:

<a href="@url"><img src="~/Content/flag_@(currentCulture.Name).gif" height="12" width="20" />
     <img src="~/Content/arrow.png" height="12" width="9" />
     <img src="~/Content/flag_@(nextCulture.Name).gif" height="12" width="20" /></a>

Resulting in respective flag images in the upper right corner:

 

As another example, that feedback message regarding the UI‘s region could be localized the following way:

@switch (UICulture)
{
    case "de-DE":
        <p>Derzeitige Sprache ist: @UICulture</p>
        break;
    default:
        <p>Current culture is: @UICulture</p>
        break;
}

 

For smallish content that certainly works, but once the affected fragment spans considerable amount or even most of the view, it‘s probably better to provide separate partial views. For example for the feature text (the blue area) on the index view:

@{ Html.RenderPartial("_Index_featured_" + UICulture); }

… which uses the _Index_featured_en-US.cshtml and _Index_featured_de-DE.cshtml partial views respectively. Careful, though. There is no fallback in this code, meaning you have to provide all localized versions, which may not always be necessary or feasible. However, it‘s quite easy to come up with a helper method, that looks for the respective files and implements proper fallback strategies.

 

This imperative approach works well for the occasional demand. However, if this becomes a regular demand, you will start looking for better solutions. E.g. you might want to place the localized views beside the regular ones with the region as part of the filename (or in region specific folders with the same filename). Just be careful that you preferred strategy does not collide with other features, such as mobile views or areas. (There are already too many competing demands.)

I do not need to walk you through respective solutions however, as Vlad has already written about the topic. He adds region specific view folders and evaluates them using his own view engine (for WebForms, but the principle holds for Razor as well). You could of course apply a different naming scheme, e.g. attach the region to the view name itself.

That’s all for now folks,
AJ.NET

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