How can i create a common ViewModel with a varying Resource file?

Question

I have a ViewModel like this:

public class MyViewModel
{   
   [Display(Name = "One_Name", ResourceType = typeof(Resources.User.Resource1))]
   public string One { get; set; }

   [Display(Name = "Two_Name", ResourceType = typeof(Resources.User.Resource1))]
   public string Two { get; set; }
}

Which is used on page 1, and works great (e.g pulls back the resource) when i do stuff like this:

@Html.LabelFor(model => model.One)

But i also want to use this ViewModel on page 2, but i wan't to point the properties to a different resource file (e.g Resources.User.Resource2).

I don't want to have to dupe the class, but i'd be open to some OO trick.

The problem is that the attribute arguments must be strings, constants, typeof or array expressions.

What's the best way to solve this problem?

where is @Darin Dimitrov when i need him. :) – RPM1984 Mar 01 '12 at 22:50 — RPM1984, Mar 01 '12 at 22:50

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 02 '12 at 15:51

Yep, it does seem like MVC doesn't support such a scenario. You can provide your own ResourceType class but it must have static properties (such as public static string One_Name and public static string Two_Name in your example) that return the display strings, and there is no elegant way to make it do what you want.

But since Html.LabelFor doesn't do anything particularly earth-shattering, you could easily do without in a view. Just write your own <label> element and get the localized string directly, which is as easy as calling ResourceManager.GetString. You could still use Html.LabelFor in most cases and only resort to writing your own labels in the (hopefully rare) cases where a certain view does need to vary the display text.

How can i create a common ViewModel with a varying Resource file?

1 Answers1