Question

I have two database tables for multilinguality in my project:

Word -ID-      -En-          -Ge-
       1       Hello         Hallo
       2       Yes            Ja

Lang -ID-   -Name-  -FlagFileName- 
       1   English    flag-en.jpg
       2   Deutsch    flag-ge.jpg

But, I need to be able to add new languages into the system. I can add a new row to Lang table and a new column to Word table, but I cannot update the DBContext object in my ASP.NET MVC3 project. My DB Objects in my Model.

public class Word
{
    public int ID { get; set; }
    public string English { get; set; }
    public string Deutsch { get; set; }
}
public class Language
{
    public int ID { get; set; }
    public string Name { get; set; }
    public string ImageFileName { get; set; }
}

I need a way to define Word as new languages can be added to it. How can I update the Word object? Is this even doable in some way?

I also have problems dealing with dynamic Views:

@{
    Type objectType = Type.GetType(typeof(MyProjectNamespace.Models.Word).AssemblyQualifiedName);
    System.Reflection.PropertyInfo[] fields = objectType.GetProperties();
}

<table>
@foreach (System.Reflection.PropertyInfo f in fields)
{ 
    <th> @f.Name.ToString() </th>
}
@foreach (var item in Model) {
<tr>
    @foreach (System.Reflection.PropertyInfo f in fields)
    { 
      <td>@Html.DisplayFor(modelItem => item.English)</td>
      <td>@Html.DisplayFor(modelItem => item.Deutsch)</td>
      <td>//How can I display for a new Language here?</td>
    }
</tr>
}
</table>

I can get every attribute of Word and print out them as Headers with the code below, but how can I print the values in these dynamic attributes? Is this doable?

I appreciate any ideas, I am even ready to recreate tables.

Answer 1

I decided to go simple. It’s maybe doable, but not worth it, to deal with dynamic Model objects and get their dynamic attributes. So I decided I need a Word table like:

Lang -ID-   -Name-  -FlagFileName- 
       1   English    flag-en.jpg
       2   Deutsch    flag-ge.jpg

Word -ID-    -Text-     -LanguageID-
       1     Hallo          2
       2     Hello          1
       3      Yes           1
       4      Ja            2

As the Words won’t be standing in a mathematical index as new languages are added such as:

  --indexed--                    --index broken--
 1-English Word                 1-English Word
 2-German Word                  2-German Word
 3-English Word                 3-Spanish Word
 4-German Word                  4-Dutch Word

And the computers cannot understand the meaning of a word with %100 reliability, I decided to hold a Meaning table, which only holds English words:

Meaning -ID-   -Text-
          1    Hello
          2    Yes

And bind the meanings with actual Words:

Word -ID-    -Text-     -LanguageID-  -MeaningID-
       1     Hallo          2              1
       2     Hello          1              1
       3      Yes           1              2
       4      Ja            2              2

I was assigning WordID’s to new dynamic elements, such as “a new type”, which will be used to fill a dropdown box somewhere. Now I’ll bind it to a MeaningID.

This solution is clear, understandable and easily-implementable, I guess. I won’t accept my own answer for a week, in case some clear solutions might be presented to my current tables.