Convert a Visual Studio resource file to a text file?

Question

I know there are tools to get text files to resource files for Visual Studio. But I want to get the text from my resource files to a text file so they can be translated. Or is there a better way to do this?

Answer 1

You could use Resx Editor, a small translation-oriented file editor.

• Target audience: translators.
• Supported file format: Microsoft RESX 2.0

Here is a link to Joannès Vermoel's (the author of the free tool) weblog entry about it.

Answer 2

In the end I just used a quick hack:

public class Export
{
    public string Run()
    {
        var resources = new StringBuilder();

        var assembly = Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly();
        var types = from t in assembly.GetTypes()
                    where t != typeof(Export)
                    select t;
        foreach (Type t in types)
        {
            resources.AppendLine(t.Name);
            resources.AppendLine("Key, Value");
            var props = from p in t.GetProperties()
                        where !p.CanWrite && p.Name != "ResourceManager"
                        select p;
            foreach (PropertyInfo p in props)
            {
                resources.AppendFormat("\"{0}\",\"{1}\"\n", p.Name, p.GetValue(null));
            }

            resources.AppendLine();
        }
        return resources.ToString();
    }
}

Add this code to the project which contains your.resx files (mine are in a separate "Languages" project) then use the following code to save the result into a .csv so that it can be loaded with a spreadsheet editor.

var hack = new Languages.Export();
var resourcesSummary = hack.Run();
var cultureName = System.Threading.Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture.Name;
using (TextWriter file = File.CreateText(@"C:\resources." + cultureName + ".csv"))
{
    file.Write(resourcesSummary);
}

This does not allow you to import files from the .csv back to your .resx files so that they can be compiled. It would be nice to have a utility that would do that.