Accessing Resource Files in MVC 3

Question

I want to to access key/value pair from my resource files in java script and .cshtml views. For some static content on my cshtml i don't want to create a property in my model so it would be nice if i could directly access resource files.

Solution

You can create a resx file and set its properties to public, as described here.

Then on your cshtml you can use:

@Resources.ResNameHere.Property

To use on javascript simply render it on a script block

<script>
    var stringFromResource = "@Resources.ResNameHere.Property";
</script>

You can also implement an extension method to Html and read the resource from anywhere, even database if you need.

public static MvcHtmlString Resource<T>(this HtmlHelper<T> html, string key)
{
    var resourceManager = new ResourceManager(typeof(Website.Resources.ResNameHere));

    var val = resourceManager.GetString(key);

    // if value is not found return the key itself
    return MvcHtmlString.Create(String.IsNullOrEmpty(val) ? key : val);
}

Then you can call as

@Html.Resource("Key")

Comments

[Vivek]

Not sure about this.could you please shed some more light on it. my resource files are in App_GlobalResources Folder.

[marcind]

Could you provide more information? What files do you have in your App_GlobalResources folder, how are you trying to access the resources, and what kind of failure are you seeing?