Multilingual website in asp.net

While its neither new nor overly complex to implement multiple languages in ASP.net, it can be at times confusing and at times bit over the top in certain scenarios. ASP.net provides resource files which can be used to update the content based on browser language choice. The other option is to have a button or user choice saved in the database which is picked up as soon as user logs in. 

Before moving further let me explain a bit what need to done at the html level, first this is key as if you have not planned for this from the start doing this at the last step can get very irritating, while defining the labels/ literals that need to switched over to the other language in addition to ID and Runat tag you need to define resource key like meta:resourceKey ="FirstName" the same needs to be define in the corresponding resource file. with this out of the way, we need to set the page UICulture and Culture the same can be set at Page directive level and in web.config level if you want it to static at global level in the application. 

now we need to override the page Initialize Culture method as shown below, here we are fetching user selected language from class user as a property. and rest is just setting of values no rocket science here.

protected override void InitializeCulture()

 {

        clsUsers obj = new cls.Users();

                                String selectedLanguage = obj.Language;

        UICulture = selectedLanguage;

        Culture = selectedLanguage;

        Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture =

                CultureInfo.CreateSpecificCulture(selectedLanguage);

       Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentUICulture = new

       CultureInfo(selectedLanguage);

      base.InitializeCulture()

}

an alternative to doing this at every page is using a base page class, here a class is inherited by System.Web.UI.Page and above method is written once and same is applicable in all the pages that inherit from base page instead of System.Web.UI.Page. More on base page is updated on the blog.

This is how the class will look like 

public class BasePage : System.Web.UI.Page

This how pages.cs will look like

public partial class UserInfo : SomeProject_BLL.BasePage

Looking forward to your comments