Building a Multi-language Site in ASP.NET Core

This is an introduction to building a multi-language website in ASP.NET Core, including creating localized resources and language-switching functionality. Building a multi-language website can be challenging, especially when it comes to ensuring a smooth user experience for visitors from different countries. ASP.NET makes this task much more straightforward. This article will explore how to build a multi-language site using ASP.NET.

 

What is Globalization

In software development, globalization refers to designing and creating software applications that can be adapted to and used by people in different cultures, regions, and languages. This involves developing software that can handle different locales, character sets, time zones, and formats for currency, dates, and time.

Globalized software applications should be able to present information in different languages and locales, handle right-to-left or left-to-right text directions, and use appropriate date, time, and number formats. It also requires considering cultural differences, such as how color, images, and symbols are perceived, to ensure the software is not culturally insensitive or offensive.

Globalization in software development aims to make the application accessible, usable, and relevant to a global audience, regardless of the user’s location or language.

 

What is Localization?

Localization in software refers to adapting a software application to meet the language, culture, and other specific requirements of a particular country or region. It involves translating text, adjusting date and time formats, currency symbols, and other culturally specific elements, and ensuring the software is compatible with different character sets and keyboard layouts.

The goal of localization is to provide a localized user experience for the software, making it easier for users in different regions to understand and use the application. This can improve the adoption and success of the software in those regions and increase its market reach.

Localization is an essential aspect of globalization in software development and is often achieved by creating localized resources for each supported language and region. These resources can dynamically adjust the software’s behavior and presentation based on the user’s preferences or the system’s settings.

 

Globalization vs. Localization

Globalization and localization are related but distinct concepts in software development. Globalization is about making software usable for a global audience, while localization is about adapting the software to meet the specific requirements of individual countries and regions.

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Setting up The Project

Let’s see an example of localization in ASP.NET. First off, let’s create a new ASP.NET  project using Visual Studio and add support for localization by installing the Microsoft.AspNetCore.Localization package from NuGet.

Localizing Views

To display the translated strings in your views, you can localize views by using the IViewLocalizer service. To do this, add the following code to the top of your Views/Home/Index.cshtml Razor view:

We use the IViewLocalizer service to access the localized strings in this example. Using the @Inject we injected the service into the view and assigned the instance to the Localizer.

The key Welcome is the key to the corresponding translated string for the current culture.

Adding the Resource Files

You can now create resource files for each culture. To do so, right-click on the project, select Add, then New Folder, and name the folder Resources. Inside the Resources folder, add a Views folder and in the Views add the Home folder. In the Home folder add a new resource file for each culture, for example, Index.en-US.resx and Index.fr-RF.resx.

As a result, you must have two resource files in the Resources/Views/Home:

• Index.en-US.resx
• Index.fr-RF.resx

The resource files will be only applied to the Views/Home/Index.cshtml. By default they are matched by path. The folder structure and file names.

 

Next, add the necessary strings to each resource file. For example, we want to localize the welcome message so we’ll open the Index.en-US.resx file and add the following key value to it:

 

Also, add the french title to Index.fr-FR.resx:

 

Configuring the Application

Next, configure your app to support multiple cultures in theProgram.cs file.

Since we’re localizing our views, let’s configure the view localization.

 

Configure the localization service as follows:

Notice that we set the Resources as the folder all resources reside in. The ResourcesPath option specifies the location where the resource files are stored.

 

And to support the cultures:

We support two cultures in our app. You can add as many cultures as you need.

 

Now that the localization service has been added, use the request localization middleware like the following in Program.csto apply the localizations to all requests:

Add the localization middleware before any middleware that needs localized strings. I added it right after var app = builder.Build();.

Query String Culture Provider

Now run the app; you can set the culture or ui-culture (or both) in the query string to see the Index view as localized. Look at the following example:

 

So one of the ways to see a localized webpage is by requesting the desired culture by including it in the query string.

Accept-Language HTTP Header

Another way is to set the request’s Accept-Language. You should see this page when you navigate to http://localhost:5197(where 5197 is the port your app listens to).

As you see, the browser has set theAccept-Languageheader to my current OS culture. Most browsers automatically pass users’ culture, which is inherited from the users’ operating systems as the Accept-Header. I can see the view with the same culture if I pass the culture in the query string like this:

 

In addition to the Razor views, you can also access the localized strings in your controllers. To do this, you can use the IStringLocalizer service.

Here’s an example of how you can use the IStringLocalizer service in a controller:

 

In this example, we are injecting the IStringLocalizer service into the HomeController. The localizer object is then used to access the localized strings in the controller’s action methods.

 

In the Title action method, we use the localizer object to access the "Home Page" string.

Finally, Add the resource files under a new folder with the name Controllers in the Resources directory. The folder structure must end up like the image on the right.

Now run the app and navigate to the following URL

You must see the following string:

 

 

 

 

 

Summary of Building a Multi-language Site in ASP.NET Core

This article discussed some techniques you can use to localize your ASP.NET applications. There’s a lot more you can do for localization. You can also use data annotations to localize the View Models or set cookies or the Content-Language HTTP header to select the user’s intended language. You can also use other patterns to address resources for corresponding types. I may write more about them later. But in general, in ASP.NET, you can make your website multi-language relatively easy. Using the localization features in ASP.NET, you can provide a seamless experience for users from different countries, making your website accessible to a broader audience. In the end, you can boost your career by joining our course to learn more about C# and ASP.NET.