Changing language of custom application page

Question

I am new to SharePoint. I am creating a custom application page (small registration form). I want to give users a facility to change language of the registration form. Is this functionality is provided by SharePoint ? Or i have to write code for this this ?

Answer 1

You can use Resource (.resx) files that hold the text of the interface, one for each language, and call the resources from within your Application Page markup.

For example, you will need the base resource file, let us call it SpResources.resx which contains the default value.

Then, for each language you with to support, create another resource file, following the following naming convention: SpResources. + LanguageCode + .resx. e.g. SpResources.en-US.resx.

This will involve some repetitive calls in the code-behind, imagining you have a Label field called lblName in the ASPX and wanted to populate it with the value stored in SP_Resources_Name in your resource file, you would need to call the following line:

lblName.Text = SPUtility.GetLocalizedString("$Resources:SpResources,SP_Resources_Name", "$Resources:SpResources", SPContext.Current.Web.Language);

You'd need to call this somewhere in the Page_Load method, or a method called by that, and do similarly for each control you want to localise.

Answer 2

You can use resource files to allow our custom application page to be available when users switch languages. Check a very good example on how to do it

But just make sure SharePoint 2010 installation has different language packs deploy. It can easily be checked If you jump into Site Actions > Site Settings you should have a link under the ‘Site Administration’ heading for ‘Language settings’.

Answer 3

For Label Control for example, we can do like this:

<'asp:Label ID="Label2" runat="server" Text="<%$Resources:SomeResources,String1 %>"><'/asp:Label>

where SomeResources is the resource file name and String1 is the Key of the value in resource file