Chapter 29: Globalization in ASP.NET MVC using Smart internationalization for ASP.NET

Section 29.1: Basic configuration and setup

1.Add the I18N nuget package to your MVC project.

2.In web.config, add the i18n.LocalizingModule to your <httpModules> or <modules> section.

<!-- IIS 6 -->

<httpModules>

<add name="i18n.LocalizingModule" type="i18n.LocalizingModule, i18n" />

</httpModules>

<!-- IIS 7 -->

<system.webServer>

<modules>

<add name="i18n.LocalizingModule" type="i18n.LocalizingModule, i18n" />

</modules>

</system.webServer>

3.Add a folder named "locale" to the root of your site. Create a subfolder for each culture you wish to support. For example, /locale/fr/.

4.In each culture-specific folder, create a text file named messages.po.

5.For testing purposes, enter the following lines of text in your messages.po file:

#: Translation test msgid "Hello, world!"

msgstr "Bonjour le monde!"

6. Add a controller to your project which returns some text to translate.

using System.Web.Mvc;

namespace I18nDemo.Controllers

{

public class DefaultController : Controller

{

public ActionResult Index()

{

//Text inside [[[triple brackets]]] must precisely match

//the msgid in your .po file.

return Content("[[[Hello, world!]]]");

}

}

}

7.Run your MVC application and browse to the route corresponding to your controller action, such as http://localhost:[yourportnumber]/default.

Observe that the URL is changed to reflect your default culture, such as http://localhost:[yourportnumber]/en/default.

8.Replace /en/ in the URL with /fr/ (or whatever culture you've selected.) The page should now display the translated version of your text.

9.Change your browser's language setting to prefer your alternate culture and browse to /default again. Observe that the URL is changed to reflect your alternate culture and the translated text appears.

10. In web.config, add handlers so that users cannot browse to your locale folder.

<!-- IIS 6 -->

<system.web>

<httpHandlers>

<add path="*" verb="*" type="System.Web.HttpNotFoundHandler"/>

</httpHandlers>

</system.web>

<!-- IIS 7 -->

<system.webServer>

<handlers>

<remove name="BlockViewHandler"/>

<add name="BlockViewHandler" path="*" verb="*" preCondition="integratedMode" type="System.Web.HttpNotFoundHandler"/>

</handlers>

</system.webServer>