Sunday, November 30, 2014

Localizing Razor Views


The Problem

Occasionally it is advantageous to move beyond resource files to support localization in an ASP.NET MVC application. Resource files contain localized phrases, blocks of text, images, and other resources that may be referenced from a view. The advantages of resource files are that there is a clear structure for defining localized data, the views incorporate pre-defined functionality to reference a resource key (name), and the views rely on the framework to select the correct localized resource file.

The disadvantage of resource files with large chunks of localized text, images, and other resources is that the view becomes just a template referring to the data. It is not possible to see the data while working on the page and the feel for the information on the page and how it is presented is lost in both the source (HTML) and WYSIWYG editors.