I have several related projects that need the same localized text, so my global resources files are in a shared assembly that’s referenced by each of those projects. It took an embarrassingly long time to figure out how to have my .
resx files generate “public” properties instead of “internal” so I could have a shared resources assembly (apparently it was pretty tricky pre-VS2008, and my “googling” bogged me down some out-of-date instructions). It’s easy though – Just change the “Custom Tool” to “PublicResXFileCodeGenerator”: …which can be done via the “Access Modifier” dropdown of the resource file designer window: A reference to my shared resources DLL gives me the ability to use the resources in code, but by default, the ASP.NET resource expression syntax: <asp:Button ID="BeerButton" runat="server" Text="<%$ Resources:MyResources, Beer %>" />
…assumes that your resources are in your web site project.
To make resource expressions work with my shared resources assembly, I added two classes to the resources assembly:
1) a custom IResourceProvider implementation:
1: using System;
2: using System.Web.Compilation;
3: using System.Globalization;
4:
5: namespace DuffBeer
6: {
7: public class CustomResourceProvider : IResourceProvider
8: {
9: public object GetObject(string resourceKey, CultureInfo culture)
10: {
11: return MyResources.ResourceManager.GetObject(resourceKey, culture);
12: }
13:
14: public System.Resources.IResourceReader ResourceReader
15: {
16: get { throw new NotSupportedException(); }
17: }
18: }
19: }
2) and a custom factory class inheriting from the ResourceProviderFactory base class:
1: using System;
2: using System.Web.Compilation;
3:
4: namespace DuffBeer
5: {
6: public class CustomResourceProviderFactory : ResourceProviderFactory
7: {
8: public override IResourceProvider CreateGlobalResourceProvider(string classKey)
9: {
10: return new CustomResourceProvider();
11: }
12:
13: public override IResourceProvider CreateLocalResourceProvider(string virtualPath)
14: {
15: throw new NotSupportedException(String.Format(
16: "{0} does not support local resources.",
17: this.GetType().Name));
18: }
19: }
20: }
In the “system.web / globalization” section of my web.config file, I point the “resourceProviderFactoryType" property to my custom factory:
<system.web>
<globalization culture="auto:en-US" uiCulture="auto:en-US"
resourceProviderFactoryType="DuffBeer.CustomResourceProviderFactory, DuffBeer" />
This simple approach met my needs for these projects , but if you want to create reusable resource provider and factory classes that allow you to specify the assembly in the resource expression, the instructions are here.
