Question

I will try to explain the best way I can. I am not an experienced programmer.

I am using Visual Studio 2008 and C#

I have ressources files (resx) that contain strings and the equivalent in the language. For example I have:
English.resx
French.resx
With the following entries:

<data name="FileError" xml:space="preserve">
    <value>There is a problem with the file : </value>
</data>

and

<data name="FileError" xml:space="preserve">
    <value>Il y a un probleme avec le fichier : </value>
</data>

Then I have the following class:

static class Language
{
    public static string FileError;

    Language(string setLanguage)
    {
        switch (setLanguage)
        {
            case "ENGLISH":
                FileError = English.FileError;
                break;
            case "FRENCH":
                FileError = French.FileError;
                break;
            default:
                break;
        }
    }
}

All of this so I can code the following way:

Language currentLanguage = Language((new ServiceConfiguration()).LanguageString)
...
try
{
 File.AppendAllText("Writing...");
}
catch (Exception fileError)
{
 Console.Write(currentLanguage.FileError + fileError.Message);
}

Here it doesn’t seem like much because there is only one message, but is there any better way I could do this ? It doesn’t seem to be too dynamic, and it looks like every time I will want to add a string I will have to recode it to multiple places, please advice a better way to do this.

Thank You.

Answer 1

.NET has built in localization functionality, so there’s no need to reinvent the wheel like you’re doing here. Check out the links below for more information:

http://www.codeproject.com/KB/dotnet/Localization.aspx

http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2006/05/30/ASP.NET-2.0-Localization-_2800_Video_2C00_-Whitepaper_2C00_-and-Database-Provider-Support_2900_.aspx

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/c6zyy3s9.aspx