How to sort a . resx (resource file) in .NET

Question

I have a problem with resource files in my project. As I created one in English, I gave it to the translation team. Somehow, they returned me resource file with values in different order, so it wasn't sorted alphabetically.

So, at first it was:

<data name="a1" xml:space="preserve">
   <value>some text2</value>
</data>
<data name="b1" xml:space="preserve">
   <value>some text3</value>
</data>
<data name="c1" xml:space="preserve">
   <value>some text1</value>
</data>

and I received:

<data name="c1" xml:space="preserve">
   <value>some text1</value>
</data>
<data name="a1" xml:space="preserve">
   <value>some text2</value>
</data>
<data name="b1" xml:space="preserve">
   <value>some text3</value>
</data>

So, is there any way to sort those elements in the .resx file by the <data name attribute?

Answer 1

SortRESX is a simple executable created by Tom Clement on CodeProject.

It sorts *.resx file alphabetically. I described it on my blog.

Answer 2

You could write a quick script to do that using LINQ to XML:

var root = XElement.Load(...);
var sortedRoot = new XElement(root.Name, root.Attributes,
        root.Elements().OrderBy(e => e.Attribute("name").Value)
);