Localization of DisplayNameAttribute

137

I am looking for a way to localize properties names displayed in a PropertyGrid. The property's name may be "overriden" using the DisplayNameAttribute attribute. Unfortunately attributes can not have non constant expressions. So I can not use strongly typed resources such as:

class Foo
{
   [DisplayAttribute(Resources.MyPropertyNameLocalized)]  // do not compile
   string MyProperty {get; set;}
}

I had a look around and found some suggestion to inherit from DisplayNameAttribute to be able to use resource. I would end up up with code like:

class Foo
{
   [MyLocalizedDisplayAttribute("MyPropertyNameLocalized")] // not strongly typed
   string MyProperty {get; set;}
}

However I lose strongly typed resource benefits which is definitely not a good thing. Then I came across DisplayNameResourceAttribute which may be what I'm looking for. But it's supposed to be in Microsoft.VisualStudio.Modeling.Design namespace and I can't find what reference I am supposed to add for this namespace.

Anybody know if there's a easier way to achieve DisplayName localization in a good way ? or if there is as way to use what Microsoft seems to be using for Visual Studio ?

c# visual-studio-2008 localization attributes

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1 Answer

You could use T4 to generate constants. I wrote one:

<#@ template debug="false" hostspecific="true" language="C#" #>
<#@ output extension=".cs" #>
<#@ assembly name="System.Xml.dll" #>
<#@ import namespace="System.Xml" #>
<#@ import namespace="System.Xml.XPath" #>
using System;
using System.ComponentModel;


namespace Bear.Client
{
 /// <summary>
 /// Localized display name attribute
 /// </summary>
 public class LocalizedDisplayNameAttribute : DisplayNameAttribute
 {
  readonly string _resourceName;

  /// <summary>
  /// Initializes a new instance of the <see cref="LocalizedDisplayNameAttribute"/> class.
  /// </summary>
  /// <param name="resourceName">Name of the resource.</param>
  public LocalizedDisplayNameAttribute(string resourceName)
   : base()
  {
   _resourceName = resourceName;
  }

  /// <summary>
  /// Gets the display name for a property, event, or public void method that takes no arguments stored in this attribute.
  /// </summary>
  /// <value></value>
  /// <returns>
  /// The display name.
  /// </returns>
  public override String DisplayName
  {
   get
   {
    return Resources.ResourceManager.GetString(this._resourceName);
   }
  }
 }

 partial class Constants
 {
  public partial class Resources
  {
  <# 
   var reader = XmlReader.Create(Host.ResolvePath("resources.resx"));
   var document = new XPathDocument(reader);
   var navigator = document.CreateNavigator();
   var dataNav = navigator.Select("/root/data");
   foreach (XPathNavigator item in dataNav)
   {
    var name = item.GetAttribute("name", String.Empty);
  #>
   public const String <#= name#> = "<#= name#>";
  <# } #>
  }
 }
}

answered 2010-07-22T16:32:24.863

Localization of DisplayNameAttribute

1 Answer

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