Changing the UI language dynamically

Question

I have a multi-language silverlight application where the resources are stored in resx files for different languages and bound to the buttons' and labels' Content Properties inside the xaml.

When setting the thread's UI culture in the constructor of the silverlight's page every thing works fine, but when changing it based on user's selection (through combobox selection) the interface doesn't change. I need the page to redraw the controls and rebind to the resource files based on the new thread's UI culture.

Answer 1

I am not sure what mechanism you are using to bind your view to your localization repository, but I am guessing that the problem lies with notification.

The view will only update the data in a binding when it gets a notification event. Most likely, the object with the localization data that you are binding to is not sending notifications when the culture changes.

You might consider adding an INotifyPropertyChanged to the object that holds your localization strings. Then, add a method to that class called "NotifyThatEverythingChanged". In that method, just send that the property string.Empty has changed, which tells the UI to update everything in the data context.

In my case, I have the object that the RESX auto-generated for me called MyUIStrings. It has a bunch of static strings in it. I derive from that class, and add the functionality to notify that everything has changed. The UI will act accordingly:

public class NotifyableUIStrings : MyUIStrings, INotifyPropertyChanged
{
    public void NotifyThatEverythingChanged()
    {
        OnPropertyChanged(string.Empty);
    }

    protected void OnPropertyChanged(string propertyName)
    {
        var handlers = PropertyChanged;
        if(handlers != null)
            handlers(this, new PropertyChangedEventArgs(propertyName));
    }

    public event PropertyChangedEventHandler PropertyChanged;
}