Localizing Silverlight application using resources

Question

I have a problem with localization of Silverlight application using resources. I wanted to make my multilingual mechanizm to be cross platform thats why I placed all localizable resources in project of type Portable Class Library. In this project I created two resource files Localization.resx and Localization.en.resx and I set and "access modifier" to public in both files. Then I created the proxy class called "LocalizationProxy" which is a proxy class to enable bindings.

public class LocalizationProxy : INotifyPropertyChanged
{
    public Localization LocalizationManager { get; private set; }

    public LocalizationProxy()
    {
        LocalizationManager = new Localization();
    }

    public void ResetResources()
    {
        OnPropertyChanged(() => LocalizationManager);
    }


    #region INotifyPropertyChanged region
    public event PropertyChangedEventHandler PropertyChanged;

    public void OnPropertyChanged<T>(Expression<Func<T>> selector)
    {
        if (PropertyChanged != null)
        {
            PropertyChanged(this, new PropertyChangedEventArgs(GetPropertyNameFromExpression(selector)));
        }
    }

    public static string GetPropertyNameFromExpression<T>(Expression<Func<T>> property)
    {
        var lambda = (LambdaExpression)property;
        MemberExpression memberExpression;

        if (lambda.Body is UnaryExpression)
        {
            var unaryExpression = (UnaryExpression)lambda.Body;
            memberExpression = (MemberExpression)unaryExpression.Operand;
        }
        else
        {
            memberExpression = (MemberExpression)lambda.Body;
        }

        return memberExpression.Member.Name;
    }
    #endregion
}

In the next step I modifed Silverlight csproj file and added "en" culture to supported types

<SupportedCultures>en</SupportedCultures>

Furthermore in application resources I created and instance of LocalizationProxy class

 <Application.Resources>
        <Localization:LocalizationProxy x:Key="LocalizationProxy"></Localization:LocalizationProxy>
    </Application.Resources>

I also changed "Neutral Language" in Assembly Information to "Polish" - this should be default application language. In the last step I bouned some values from view to the resources

<TextBlock TextWrapping="Wrap" x:Name="PageTitle" Text="{Binding Source={StaticResource LocalizationProxy},Path=LocalizationManager.Title,Mode=TwoWay}" />

Unfortunatelly despite the fact that Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture is "pl-PL" my application is still in English language.However if I use the same code in Windows Phone application everything works fine - I can even change application language in runtime. Is there any difference in localizing Silverlight application and localizing Windows Phone apps ?

Here is my application

http://www.fileserve.com/file/TkQkAhV/LocalizationSolution.rar

As I mentioned before, Localization in Windows Phone works fine, but in Silverlight application labels are not translated

Answer 1

make sure you made all the steps bellow properly.

Create your ViewModel Class

Implement the INotifyPropertyChanged interface:

    public event PropertyChangedEventHandler PropertyChanged;
    protected virtual void OnPropertyChanged(string propertyName)
    {
        if (PropertyChanged != null)
        {
            PropertyChanged(this, new PropertyChangedEventArgs(propertyName));
        }
    }

Create the property that will return the right language:

    public object MainResourcesSmart
    {
        get
        {
            var myCulture = Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentUICulture.Name.ToUpper();
            switch (myCulture)
            {
                case "EN-US":
                    return new MyResourceEn();
                case "ES-AR":
                    return new MyResourceEs();
                default:
                    return new MyResource();
            }
        }
    }

Set all resources to public

Use the method bellow to refresh it on screen every time you change the language:

    private void MainResourcesSmartRefresh()
    {
        OnPropertyChanged("MainResourcesSmart");
    }

Bind the ViewModel to your View (MainPage) for example:

    public MyViewModel ViewModel
    {
        get { return (MyViewModel)DataContext; }
        set { DataContext = value; }
    }

    public MainPage()
    {
        ViewModel = new MyViewModel();
    }

Bind the Resouce property to your UserControl like:

  <TextBlock Height="20" HorizontalAlignment="Left" VerticalAlignment="Bottom" Foreground="#7F4F8AB2" FontSize="10.667" Text="{Binding MainResourcesSmart.NameOfTheCompany}" FontFamily="Trebuchet MS" />

Answer 2

You should use the fully qualified ISO 3166 and 639 codes combined with a hyphen as Rumplin describes.

see

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ISO_639-1_codes
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166-1