Better i18n with .Net

February 12, 2015 • 2 minutes read • .net

.Net Framework ships with a simple — yet powerful — translation feature. It’s all about those resources files (.resx) that can be created and edited inside Visual Studio. Nothing is so good that cannot be enhanced, is that correct?

I have a helper class that I commonly use in projects that needs i18n that helps save a lot when coding. Instead of implicit calling the resources classes and it’s attributes, I’ve created an extension method for both String and Enum that does the necessary resource lookup and translation.

The usage is very straight forward. You have a string variable containing some text. When you call the i18n() extension method on this variable, it will lookup in the correct resource file for a translation using the current thread culture. If it does not find a translation for it, the original text is returned.

The failover strategy can be changed by using the interface II18nLookupFailedStrategy. With this interface it is possible to define what to do when the lookup for the translation fails. I’ve write three implementations for this interface that came to mind.

IgnoreI18nLookupFailedStrategy: Does nothing. This is the default strategy.
FormatTextI18nLookupFailedStrategy: If it does not find a translation, a text is prepended or appended to the original text. The idea is to add a text that clearly tells the user/programmer that a translation is missing and it is necessary to take an action. Eg.: “TRANSLATION IS MISSING!!! -> Hello <- DO IT NOW”
ThrowExceptionI18nLookupFailedStrategy: This is self-explanatory. The most rigorous strategy that forces the programmer to translate it immediately or the project won’t run.

Just take a look at the following example.

I18nConfig.SetResources(
    typeof(StringResources),
    typeof(EnumResources)
);

I18nConfig.LookupFailedStrategy = new ThrowExceptionI18nLookupFailedStrategy();

"Click here".i18n(); //Looks for 'Click_here' in the resources files
Gender.Male.i18n(); //Looks for 'Gender_Male' or 'Male' in the resources files
"FIRST_NAME".i18n(); //Looks for 'FIRST_NAME' in the resources files

Source code is available at goenning/i18n-extension.

Enjoy!

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