Thread: Global Resource Files

I'm trying to get labels on my site to change depending on the culture set for a particular user.

The default resource will be en-GB and I have a MyName.resx file with an entry:-

Code:

Name      Value
County    County

I also have a file MyName.en-US.resx with an entry:-

Code:

Name      Value
County    State

In my page I have this label control:-

Code:

<asp:Label ID="lblCounty" runat="server" Text="<%$Resources:MyName,County %>" />

And in my Master Page I'm trying to set the culture value of the thread using:-

Code:

        Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentUICulture = new CultureInfo(user.culture);
        Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture = new CultureInfo(user.culture);

I've tried this in various page event calls (Page_Load, Page_PreRender etc.) but it keeps using the en-US resource and displaying State on the page.

The culture for the user is set to en-GB and if I write out the display name, directly after setting it as above, using the following code, :-

Code:

Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture.DisplayName

it displays English (United Kingdom)

How do I get the resource files to work correctly?

OK. For anyone interested, to get this to work, you have to override the InitializeCulture() method of the System.Web.UI.Page class.

The way I did this was to create my own base page class that inherits from the System Page class:-

Code:

using System;
using System.Web;
using System.Globalization;

using Ascent.App.BLL.Users;

namespace Ascent.App.BLL.Pages
{
    public class BasePage : System.Web.UI.Page
    {
        protected override void InitializeCulture()
        {
            Users.User user = new User();
            user = Users.User.GetUser(Convert.ToInt32(HttpContext.Current.User.Identity.Name));
            System.Threading.Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture = new CultureInfo(user.culture);
            System.Threading.Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentUICulture = new CultureInfo(user.culture);
        }
    }
}

And then have all your pages (or just any pages that are going to use globalization) inherit from this class instead of the System Page class.

The alternative is to include the InitializeCulture override in each page you need it for. NOTE: You can't include it in a master page as there is no InitializeCulture method in the System MasterPage class to overwrite.

You then just need .resx files for each culture you're going to provide different information for (resource.en-gb.resx, resource.en-us.resx) and a base .resx file for default (resource.resx). Not sure if you need this last one, but I have it in mine...

Hope that helps someone.