Localizing ASP.NET Applications
Copy and Translate
The easiest way to localize a Web page is usually to create a copy and translate it to the target language. This works well for static content that does not require a lot of maintenance. To support this model for ASP.NET pages, you can set the Culture attribute using the Page directive. All locale-dependent methods pick up the value of the Culture attribute.
The following sample shows how to do this for three independent, localized versions of a page. The Culture property is set on each page to determine the format of the date:
<%@Page Culture="de-DE" Language="VB" %>
...
<%=DateTime.Now.ToString("f", Nothing)%>
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Localization and Controls
An improvement over the simple copy-and-translate approach is to use controls to pick up the culture of the main page. In the following sample, the image of the flag and the search bar are controls. Depending on the culture of the hosting page, they render different content. To support this, the UICulture attribute is also added to each page:
<%@Page Culture="de-DE" UICulture="de-DE" Language="VB" %>
The flag control (Flag.ascx), for example, just uses the culture name to build the Src attribute of an <img> tag:
<%@Import Namespace="System.Globalization"%>
<script runat="Server" Language="VB">
Overrides Protected Sub Render(writer As HtmlTextWriter)
FlagImage.Src = "../../flags/" & CultureInfo.CurrentCulture.Name & ".jpg"
FlagImage.Alt = CultureInfo.CurrentCulture.NativeName
MyBase.Render(writer)
End Sub
</script>
<img runat="server" id="FlagImage" />
The search control (Search.ascx) uses a switch statement to initialize the values of a label and a text box, but the culture name could also be the parameter for a database query:
Sub LocalizeSearchText()
Select Case String.Intern(CultureInfo.CurrentUICulture.Name))
Case "en-US"
SearchText.Text = "Clinton"
SearchButton.Text = "Search"
Case "de-DE"
...
Case "ja-JP"
...
Case Else
SearchButton.Text = "Search"
End Select
End Sub
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Section Summary
- ASP.NET pages support Culture and UICulture attributes to support independent localized pages.
- Controls on pages can pick the culture of the page and can render culture-dependent content.