How to use resource files

Question

Plenty of links, no definitive answer found. How to use localizable resource files and change the current locale for a user under sharepoint AND external apps.

I have global resources deployed with my solution. The default invariant file works absolutely fine, but when I set the user's locale to something different, the locale is not being picked up.

Do we need satelite assemblies? I see VS2010 is creating folders and dlls under the bin directory one for each culture variant - but with the same name!? So this post is erroneous as u cant add the same dll name to the package.

I would like to be able to load the resources from the dll so that other apps (services/consoles) can also access these resources.

Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture = CultureInfo.CreateSpecificCulture("zh-HK");
Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentUICulture = new CultureInfo("zh-HK");
object o = HttpContext.GetGlobalResourceObject("myAppResources", "FRONT_PAGE_INTRO");

This is what VS2010 has in the manifest:

 <ApplicationResourceFiles>
    <App_GlobalResourceFile Location="myApp\myAppResources.resx" />
    <App_GlobalResourceFile Location="myApp\myAppResources.zh-HK.resx" />
  </ApplicationResourceFiles>

and

<Assembly Location="myApp.resources.dll" DeploymentTarget="GlobalAssemblyCache" />

Answer 1

Turned out to be where I was registering the locale, this needs to be in the PreRequestHandler not the BeginRequest one.

application.PreRequestHandlerExecute += SetLocale;

not

application.BeginRequest += SetLocale;

private void SetLocale(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
   LocalizationHelper.SetThreadCurrentCulture();
}

Obvious!