translate-enum-net.md

Translate System.Enum

It's quite often that you do have a enumeration in the domain to ensure that your entity might have value only from predefined list of values - like Document.Status or PurchaseOrder.Shipment.Status. These values are usually defined as System.Enum. And it's also quite often case when you need to render a list of these available values on the page or anywhere else for the user of the application to choose from. Now in 2.0 enumeration translation is easily available.

[LocalizedResource]
public enum DocumentStatus
{
    None,
    New,
    Pending,
    Active,
    Closed
}

[LocalizedModel]
public class Document
{
    ...

    public DocumentStatus Status { get; }
}

Now you can use following snippet to give end-user localized dropdown list of available document statuses:

@using DbLocalizationProvider
@inject ILocalizationProvider Provider
@model Document

@{
    var statuses = Enum.GetValues(typeof(DocumentStatus))
                       .Cast<DocumentStatus>()
                       .Select(s => new SelectListItem
                                        {
                                            Value = s.ToString(),
                                            Text = Provider.Translate(s)
                                        });
}

@Html.DropDownListFor(m => m.Status, statuses)

Or if you just need to output current status of the document to the end-user:

@using DbLocalizationProvider
@inject ILocalizationProvider Provider
@model Document

@Provider.Translate(Model.Status)

Specify Translation for Enum

By default name of the Enum member is taken as translation of the localizable resource. If you need to specify default translation for the resource, you can use [Display] attribute from DataAnnotations namespace:

[LocalizedResource]
public enum DocumentStatus
{
    None,
    New,
    [Display(Name = "Pending document...")] Pending,
    Active,
    Closed
}

Resource Keys for Enum

Sometimes (usage for me was EPiServer visitor groups) you just need to control naming for each individual Enum item. Now you can do that with [ResourceKey] attribute. Hope code explains how it might look:

[LocalizedResource(KeyPrefix = "/this/is/prefix/")]
public enum ThisIsMyStatus
{
    [ResourceKey("nothing")]
    None,

    [ResourceKey("something")]
    Some,

    [ResourceKey("anything")]
    Any
}

For instance you have following visitor group criteria:

namespace My.Project.Namespace
{

[VisitorGroupCriterion(..,
    LanguagePath = "/visitorgroupscriterias/usernamecriterion")]
public class UsernameCriterion : CriterionBase<UsernameCriterionModel>
{
    ...
}

public class UsernameCriterionModel : CriteriaPackModelBase
{
    [Required]
    [DojoWidget(SelectionFactoryType = typeof(EnumSelectionFactory))]
    public UsernameValueCondition Condition { get; set; }

    public string Value { get; set; }
}

public enum UsernameValueCondition
{
    Matches,
    StartsWith,
    EndsWith,
    Contains
}

So if anybody will look after resources with following key:

/enums/my/project/namespace/usernamecriterion/usernamevaluecondition

and then name of the Enum. So you can control this and decorate each enum member with ResourceKey attribute to generate specific keys if needed.

namespace My.Project.Namespace
{
    [LocalizedResource(KeyPrefix = "/enums/my/project/namespace/usernamecriterion/usernamevaluecondition/")]
    public enum UsernameValueCondition
    {
        [ResourceKey("matches")]
        Matches,
        [ResourceKey("startswith")]
        StartsWith,
        [ResourceKey("endswith")]
        EndsWith,
        [ResourceKey("contains")]
        Contains
    }
}

Maybe it's worth just to create new attribute - like [EnumResource] or something - namespace and member resource key calculations would be done for me?! I know - I'm lazy.. Sorry..

Tanslating Enums from different assemblies

Sometimes you need to add translations for System.Enum types from different assemblies where you don't own or have source code. For this case you can use foreign resources concept.