Set Culture in an ASP Net MVC app

Question

What is the best place to set the Culture UI Culture in an ASP net MVC app  Currently I have a CultureController class which looks like this   public class CultureController   Controller       public ActionResult SetSpanishCulture                 HttpContext Session  culture      es-ES           return RedirectToAction  Index    Home               public ActionResult SetFrenchCulture                 HttpContext Session  culture      fr-FR           return RedirectToAction  Index    Home              and a hyperlink for each language on the homepage with a link such as this    lt li gt  lt    Html ActionLink  French    SetFrenchCulture    Culture    gt  lt  li gt   lt li gt  lt    Html ActionLink  Spanish    SetSpanishCulture    Culture    gt  lt  li gt    which works fine but I am thinking there is a more appropriate way to do this   I am reading the Culture using the following ActionFilter http   www iansuttle com blog post ASPNET-MVC-Action-Filter-for-Localized-Sites aspx   I am a bit of an MVC noob so am not confident I am setting this in the correct place   I don t want to do it at the web config level  it has to be based on a user s choice   I also don t want to check their http-headers to get the culture from their browser settings   Edit   Just to be clear - I am not trying to decide whether to use session or not  I am happy with that bit   What I am trying to work out is if it is best to do this in a Culture controller that has an action method for each Culture to be set  or is there is a better place in the MVC pipeline to do this

User · Answer

I would do it in the Initialize event of the controller like this         protected override void Initialize System Web Routing RequestContext requestContext                base Initialize requestContext            const string culture    en-US           CultureInfo ci   CultureInfo GetCultureInfo culture            Thread CurrentThread CurrentCulture   ci          Thread CurrentThread CurrentUICulture   ci

User · Answer

protected void Application AcquireRequestState object sender  EventArgs e                        if Context Session   null              Thread CurrentThread CurrentCulture                       Thread CurrentThread CurrentUICulture    Context Session  culture       Context Session  culture     new CultureInfo  pt-BR     as CultureInfo

User · Answer

What is the best place is your question  The best place is inside the Controller Initialize method  MSDN writes that it is called after the constructor and before the action method  In contrary of overriding OnActionExecuting  placing your code in the Initialize method allow you to benefit of having all custom data annotation and attribute on your classes and on your properties to be localized   For example  my localization logic come from an class that is injected to my custom controller  I have access to this object since Initialize is called after the constructor  I can do the Thread s culture assignation and not having every error message displayed correctly    public BaseController IRunningContext runningContext             protected override void Initialize RequestContext requestContext          base Initialize requestContext        var culture   runningContext GetCulture         Thread CurrentThread CurrentUICulture   culture       Thread CurrentThread CurrentCulture   culture       Even if your logic is not inside a class like the example I provided  you have access to the RequestContext which allow you to have the URL and HttpContext and the RouteData which you can do basically any parsing possible

User · Answer

I m using this localization method and added a route parameter that sets the culture and language whenever a user visits example com xx-xx   Example   routes MapRoute  DefaultLocalized                 language - culture   controller   action   id                new                               controller    Home                   action    Index                   id                       language    nl                   culture    NL                    I have a filter that does the actual culture language setting   using System Globalization  using System Threading  using System Web Mvc   public class InternationalizationAttribute   ActionFilterAttribute        public override void OnActionExecuting ActionExecutingContext filterContext             string language    string filterContext RouteData Values  language       nl           string culture    string filterContext RouteData Values  culture       NL            Thread CurrentThread CurrentCulture   CultureInfo GetCultureInfo string Format   0 - 1    language  culture            Thread CurrentThread CurrentUICulture   CultureInfo GetCultureInfo string Format   0 - 1    language  culture               To activate the Internationalization attribute  simply add it to your class    Internationalization  public class HomeController   Controller         Now whenever a visitor goes to http   example com de-DE Home Index the German site is displayed   I hope this answers points you in the right direction   I also made a small MVC 5 example project which you can find here  Just go to http    yourhost   port  en-us home index to see the current date in English  US   or change it to http    yourhost   port  de-de home index for German etcetera

User · Answer

If using Subdomains  for example like  pt mydomain com  to set portuguese for example  using Application AcquireRequestState won t work  because it s not called on subsequent cache requests    To solve this  I suggest an implementation like this    Add the VaryByCustom parameter to the OutPutCache like this    OutputCache Duration   10000  VaryByCustom    lang    public ActionResult Contact         return View  Contact       In global asax cs  get the culture from the host using a function call   protected void Application AcquireRequestState object sender  EventArgs e        System Threading Thread CurrentThread CurrentUICulture   GetCultureFromHost       Add the GetCultureFromHost function to global asax cs   private CultureInfo GetCultureFromHost         CultureInfo ci   new CultureInfo  en-US       en-US     string host   Request Url Host ToLower        if  host Equals  mydomain com                  ci   new CultureInfo  en-US              else if  host StartsWith  pt                   ci   new CultureInfo  pt              else if  host StartsWith  de                   ci   new CultureInfo  de              else if  host StartsWith  da                   ci   new CultureInfo  da               return ci     And finally override the GetVaryByCustomString      to also use this function   public override string GetVaryByCustomString HttpContext context  string value        if  value ToLower       lang                 CultureInfo ci   GetCultureFromHost            return ci Name            return base GetVaryByCustomString context  value        The function Application AcquireRequestState is called on non-cached calls  which allows the content to get generated and cached  GetVaryByCustomString is called on cached calls to check if the content is available in cache  and in this case we examine the incoming host domain value  again  instead of relying on just the current culture info  which could have changed for the new request  because we are using subdomains

User · Answer

1  Create a custom attribute and override method like this   public class CultureAttribute   ActionFilterAttribute       public override void OnActionExecuting ActionExecutingContext filterContext               Retreive culture from GET     string currentCulture   filterContext HttpContext Request QueryString  culture            Also  you can retreive culture from Cookie like this         string currentCulture   filterContext HttpContext Request Cookies  cookie   Value          Set culture     Thread CurrentThread CurrentCulture   new CultureInfo currentCulture       Thread CurrentThread CurrentUICulture   CultureInfo CreateSpecificCulture currentCulture             2  In App Start  find FilterConfig cs  add this attribute   this works for WHOLE application   public class FilterConfig       public static void RegisterGlobalFilters GlobalFilterCollection filters               Add custom attribute here     filters Add new CultureAttribute                   That s it    If you want to define culture for each controller action in stead of whole application  you can use this attribute like this    Culture  public class StudentsController   Controller       Or    Culture  public ActionResult Index         return View

User · Answer

I know this is an old question  but if you really would like to have this working with your ModelBinder  in respect to DefaultModelBinder ResourceClassKey    MyResource   as well as the resources indicated in the data annotations of the viewmodel classes   the controller or even an ActionFilter is too late to set the culture   The culture could be set in Application AcquireRequestState  for example   protected void Application AcquireRequestState object sender  EventArgs e                   For example a cookie  but better extract it from the url         string culture   HttpContext Current Request Cookies  culture   Value           Thread CurrentThread CurrentCulture   CultureInfo GetCultureInfo culture           Thread CurrentThread CurrentUICulture   CultureInfo GetCultureInfo culture             EDIT  Actually there is a better way using a custom routehandler which sets the culture according to the url  perfectly described by Alex Adamyan on his blog   All there is to do is to override the GetHttpHandler method and set the culture there   public class MultiCultureMvcRouteHandler   MvcRouteHandler       protected override IHttpHandler GetHttpHandler RequestContext requestContext                   get culture from route data         var culture   requestContext RouteData Values  culture   ToString            var ci   new CultureInfo culture           Thread CurrentThread CurrentUICulture   ci          Thread CurrentThread CurrentCulture   CultureInfo CreateSpecificCulture ci Name           return base GetHttpHandler requestContext

User · Answer

Being as it is a setting that is stored per-user  the session is an appropriate place to store the informtion   I would change your controller to take the culture string as a parameter  rather than having a different action method for each potential culture  Adding a link to the page is easy  and you shouldn t need to write the same code repeatedly any time a new culture is required   public class CultureController   Controller               public ActionResult SetCulture string culture                        HttpContext Session  culture     culture             return RedirectToAction  Index    Home                          lt li gt  lt    Html ActionLink  French    SetCulture   new  controller    Culture   culture    fr-FR     gt  lt  li gt   lt li gt  lt    Html ActionLink  Spanish    SetCulture   new  controller    Culture   culture    es-ES     gt  lt  li gt

[asp.net-mvc] Set Culture in an ASP.Net MVC app

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