"zh-hk" culture does not output Chinese in ASP.NET, but does output Chinese in WinForms?

Question

I have this C# code:

Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture = new CultureInfo(cultureName);    
dateScale.EndDate.ToString("dd/MMMM", CultureInfo.CurrentCulture);

If I set culture to be "zh-HK", in ASP.NET the output is in English. But when the same logic is ran as a unit test (so same as running as a WinForms app), the output is in Chinese.

Answer 1

The server where you are running your asp.net website have the correct Language Packs installed?

Default .NET framework instalations, have language neutral binaries. I belive that for chinese you need to install Language specific Language Packs.

You can get more info on here

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/vstudio/5a4x27ek(v=vs.100).aspx

Some examples of these packages are dotNetFx40LP_Full_x86_x64de.exe (for the German - Germany culture) and dotNetFx40LP_Full_x86_x64ja.exe (for the Japanese culture).

UPDATE: As Panagiotis Kanavos wrote, this is only for string output, like days of the week. Why are you setting the culture in the Thread? You should specify the culture in the web.config.

<globalization uiCulture="zh-HK" culture="zh-HK" />

Answer 2

Web applications use multiple threads to service a large number of requests. Setting the culture in one thread doesn't mean it will be available in others.

Furthermore, the culture used for each request depends on globalization settings in web.config, page-level settings and the end user's language preferences. Even if you set the culture for one request, it will be reset when the thread is reused to service another request.

Actually, there is no reason to change the current thread's culture if you want to format for a specific culture. The following code will work without problem:

var culture = new CultureInfo("zh-hk");    
Console.WriteLine(DateTime.Now.ToString("dd/MMMM", culture));

This returns 11/十二月 (.NET Fiddle here).

Check How to: Set the Culture and UI Culture for ASP.NET Web Page Globalization for the settings you need to set to ensure a specific culture is used for globalization.

First, if you want to use "zh-hk" for all pages, you can add the following setting in web.config:

<system.web>
  <globalization uiCulture="zh" culture="zh-HK" />
</system.web>

Second, if you want to set the culture programmatically on a page, depending on some criteria (eg a query parameter or user profile setting), you can override InitializeCulture and set the culture you want in the UICulture and Culture properties.

Finally, if you want to create language-specific pages, you can set the culture on each page's Page directive:

<%@ Page UICulture="zh" Culture="zh-HK" %>