Question

I have a localized application, and I am wondering if it is possible to have the DisplayName for a certain model property set from a Resource.

I’d like to do something like this:

public class MyModel {
  [Required]
  [DisplayName(Resources.Resources.labelForName)]
  public string name{ get; set; }
}

But I can’t to it, as the compiler says: “An attribute argument must be a constant expression, typeof expression or array creation expression of an attribute parameter type” 🙁

Are there any workarounds? I am outputting labels manually, but I need these for the validator output!

Answer 1

How about writing a custom attribute:

public class LocalizedDisplayNameAttribute: DisplayNameAttribute
{
    public LocalizedDisplayNameAttribute(string resourceId) 
        : base(GetMessageFromResource(resourceId))
    { }

    private static string GetMessageFromResource(string resourceId)
    {
        // TODO: Return the string from the resource file
    }
}

which could be used like this:

public class MyModel 
{
    [Required]
    [LocalizedDisplayName("labelForName")]
    public string Name { get; set; }
}