How to change my MVC Website's Current Culture at Runtime

Question

I have a problem with my MVC Project where I need users to be able to change the localization of the site at runtime, my code below is what I've tried so far, and surely enough the current culture does change, but I'm seeing no changes in my site.

Strangely, setting the culture in Web.Config works fine!

my code is below, any ideas at all?

[AllowAnonymous]
        [HttpPost]
        public ActionResult SelectLanguage(LoginViewModel model)
        {
            switch (model.SelectedLanguage)
            {
                case "French":
                    CultureInfo.CurrentCulture=new CultureInfo("fr-fr");
                    CultureInfo.CurrentUICulture = new CultureInfo("fr-fr");
                    break;
            }

            return RedirectToAction("Index");

        }

Would that work, considering I'm using a Viewmodel as my DTO? — Captain_Custard, Oct 01 '15 at 09:06
I don't know, hence the question mark... :) It was just a hunch. I never had to change the server side culture dynamically. — Andrei V, Oct 01 '15 at 09:09
It does change the culture, which is wierd because I'm seeing no translation at all, if I change the Web.config manually it works a charm so I don't see how this code doesn't work — Captain_Custard, Oct 01 '15 at 09:10
[This]( http://stackoverflow.com/questions/15108524/change-culture-based-on-a-link-mvc4) might help — too_cool, Oct 01 '15 at 09:10
Reason why you can't see any changes is that your page is already loaded with old culture before you changed it, if you will go to new page it will be loaded with new culture. Have you checked that!! — Mukesh Modhvadiya, Oct 01 '15 at 09:11

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 01 '15 at 09:17

The good way to do it is to make a method which sets a cookie in your browser :

public void ChangeCulture(string lang)
{
    Response.Cookies.Remove("Language");

    HttpCookie languageCookie = System.Web.HttpContext.Current.Request.Cookies["Language"];

    if (languageCookie == null) languageCookie = new HttpCookie("Language");

    languageCookie.Value = lang;

    languageCookie.Expires = DateTime.Now.AddDays(10);

    Response.SetCookie(languageCookie);

    Response.Redirect(Request.UrlReferrer.ToString());
}

After this ( the tricky way ) you need to make every controller to inherit from one BaseController. It is tricky because you need to override Initialize.

protected override void Initialize(System.Web.Routing.RequestContext requestContext)
    {


        HttpCookie languageCookie = System.Web.HttpContext.Current.Request.Cookies["Language"];
        if (languageCookie != null)
        {
            Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture = new CultureInfo(languageCookie.Value);
            Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentUICulture = new CultureInfo(languageCookie.Value);
        }
        else
        {
        //other code here
        }


        base.Initialize(requestContext);
    }

and in your Method call ChangeCulture() with lang

[AllowAnonymous]
        [HttpPost]
        public ActionResult SelectLanguage(LoginViewModel model)
        {
            switch (model.SelectedLanguage)
            {
                case "French":
                    ChangeCulture("fr-Fr");
                    break;
            }

            return RedirectToAction("Index");

        }

score 0 · Answer 2 · edited May 23 '17 at 11:52

this question Change culture based on a link MVC4 helped a lot!

Basically I needed to override the culture for my resource strings, not the actual application's Culture!

my code has been changed to this;

 [AllowAnonymous]
        [HttpPost]
        public ActionResult SelectLanguage(LoginViewModel model)
        {
            switch (model.SelectedLanguage)
            {
                case "French":
                    LanguageStrings.Culture = new CultureInfo("fr-fr");
                    break;
            }

            return RedirectToAction("Index");

        }

and works like a Charm! =D

So basically from next time Do some search before posting a question.. :) — too_cool, Oct 01 '15 at 09:18

How to change my MVC Website's Current Culture at Runtime

2 Answers2