ASP.NET: Changing a site's culture programmatically

Question

i'm trying to set my website's culture programmatically, so when a user clicks a button they can change the text on the page from english to spanish. here's my code:

protected void btnChangeLanguage(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture = new CultureInfo("es");
    Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentUICulture = new CultureInfo("es);
}

<asp:Label ID="lblDisplay" runat="server" meta:ResourceKey="lblDisplay" />

<asp:Button ID="btnChangeLanguage" runat="server" Text="Change Language"
        OnClick="btnChangeLanguage_Click" />

i have a Default.aspx.resx file with a key/value of: lblDisplay.text/English and a Default.aspx.es.resx file with a key/value of: lblDisplay.text/Espanol

i can't get my Label's text to change from "English" to "Spanish". anyone see what i'm doing wrong?

Answer 1

ASP.Net threads are used for the lifetime of one request, not a user's entire session. Worse, sometimes the framework will recycle the same thread to handle additional requests rather than return it to the pool and get a new one (it's not that big a deal because the next request will initialize the culture again, but still).

Instead, you need to override the InitializeCulture() method for your page. See this link for more detail:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bz9tc508.aspx

Answer 2

1. Create Session variable called "CurrentUI". and change it on link buttons event eg:

   Here i have two link buttons for each language

   protected void EnglishLinkButton_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) {
      Session["CurrentUI"] = "en-US";
      Response.Redirect(Request.Url.OriginalString);
   
   }
   
   protected void SinhalaLinkButton_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) {
      // සිංහල (ශ්‍රී ලංකා)
      Session["CurrentUI"] = "si-LK";
      Response.Redirect(Request.Url.OriginalString);
   
   }
   

2. Now you need to override the InitializeCulture() in the base class of page

    protected override void InitializeCulture() {
        if (Session["CurrentUI"] != null) {
            String selectedLanguage = (string)Session["CurrentUI"];
            UICulture = selectedLanguage;
            Culture = selectedLanguage;
   
            Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture =
                CultureInfo.CreateSpecificCulture(selectedLanguage);
            Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentUICulture = new
                CultureInfo(selectedLanguage);
        }
   
        base.InitializeCulture();
   }
   

3. Note that I used

   //Response.Redirect(Request.Url.OriginalString);
   

   after assigning culture key into the session in order to create a second post back to the page. Because InitializeCulture() happens before the event and change will be applicable in the next request only.