Internationalization in the web service method of Asp.net

Asp.net internationalization facilitates to adapt an asp.net web site to different languages and regional differences. If we use browser’s language/ culture for internationalization, we only need to set the following line in web.config under system.web : <globalization culture="auto" uiCulture="auto" enableClientBasedCulture="true"/>.

If we use user-preferred language/ culture for internationalization, we have to do more work. As we know, to support Internationalization in an asp.net page, we can override InitializeCulture method. In the override InitializeCulture method, we can change both the Culture and UI culture. However, in the web service method call of asp.net, asp.net does not provide any functionality to override this method or this type of functionality. Another point is we can change the both culture and UI culture when the web service method is invoked but it does not have an effect on the internationalization.

As we know, on every web service call or asp.net page request, BeginRequest event of global.asax is fired before any specific processing. If we change the Culture and UIculture of current thread in the BeginRequest event of global.asax, it affects the Internationalization both in web service method and asp.net page and we can get the desired result. We can write the following code to implement so in global.asax:

   1: void Application_BeginRequest(Object Sender, EventArgs e)

   2:   {

   3:       string culture= string.Empty;

   4:       if (HttpContext.Current.Request.Cookies["language"] != null)

   5:       {

   6:           culture = Request.Cookies.Get("language").Value.ToString();

   7:       }

   8:       else

   9:       {

  10:           culture = "en-US";

  11:       }

  12:       System.Threading.Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentUICulture = new System.Globalization.CultureInfo(culture);

  13:       System.Threading.Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture = System.Globalization.CultureInfo.CreateSpecificCulture(culture);

  14:   }

Changing the CurrentCulture of current thread based on the cookie value will change the number formats, date format according to user-selected culture. As we know, a new resource file is created for each language/culture that the website supports. Then culture wise strings are retrieved by name. Changing the CurrentUICulture of current thread based on the cookie value will select proper resource file according to user-selected culture.

Now the question is how we can get the current culture to set in the BeginRequest event of global.asax. A cookie is a small text that associated with every http request for a particular domain. We can set cookie from both the server side and client side. In the client side, we can keep the culture setting in cookie using JavaScript code and retrieve it from the request object in the BeginRequest event of global.asax. Moreover, When BeginRequest method is invoked, the session object is not initialized that time for this request. Therefore, we cannot keep the culture setting in the session. In client side, you can set the cookie using the following Jquery code: $.cookie('language', prefLanguage). In server side, you can use the following code to set the cookie:

   1: System.Web.HttpCookie aCookie = new System.Web.HttpCookie("language");

   2: aCookie.Value = prefLanguage.ToString();

   3: System.Web.HttpContext.Current.Response.Cookies.Add(aCookie);  

Hope this will save some of your time.