Deploy a resource file to App_GlobalResource folder on activation

Question

Does any one know the best way to deploy a resource file to the App_GlobalResource folder of the web application when a feature is activated?

Answer 1

Application resource files cannot be deployed via a feature unless you execute some code and start a SharePoint timer job that copies the files to the App_GlobalResources folder on each Web front-end server.

You should instead let the SharePoint solutions framework deploy the .RESX files to the App_GlobalResources folder on each server. You can specify application resource files as follows in the manifest.xml file of your WSP solution package:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Solution SolutionId="{185E973C-3A10-4e2a-9E0F-DC14414551F9}" 
          xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/" 
          DeploymentServerType="WebFrontEnd">

  <ApplicationResourceFiles>
    <ApplicationResourceFile Location="yourappname.resx"/>
    <ApplicationResourceFile Location="yourappname.en-US.resx"/>
  </ApplicationResourceFiles>

 ...
</Solution>

When you deploy the WSP solution package using STSADM or Central Administration, the SharePoint solutions framework will start a timer job that deploys these files to the App_GlobalResources folder of all the Web applications you decided to deploy the solution to.

Answer 2

We recently ran into the same issue on our farm installation. Unfortunately, adding ApplicationResourceFile entries in the manifest only gets your resources to the Resources-folder.

While you can manually deploy the resource files from Resources to App_GlobalResources with stsadm -o copyappbincontent (must be issued on every front end server), we ended up creating a timer job to manually copy the files, as outlined here:

Answer 3

So, as a final followup to this question here is what we finally did to completely automate this process.

We did, as was suggested, use the ApplicationResourceFile element in the manifest file.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Solution SolutionId="{185E973C-3A10-4e2a-9E0F-DC14414551F9}"
          xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/"
          DeploymentServerType="WebFrontEnd">
  <ApplicationResourceFiles>
    <ApplicationResourceFile Location="yourappname.resx"/>
    <ApplicationResourceFile Location="yourappname.en-US.resx"/>
  </ApplicationResourceFiles> ...
</Solution>

This did in fact put the files into the "resources" folder. So, we simply accessed the resources from there in code like so:

string appPath = HttpContext.Current.Request.MapPath(HttpContext.Current.Request.ApplicationPath);
ResourceManager resX = ResourceManager.CreateFileBasedResourceManager("ResourceFileName", appPath + "resources", null);

SPSecurity.RunWithElevatedPrivileges(delegate()
{
    AddResource(resX, "DefaultTextBoxLabelText");

We run this code in the constructor and add the entries from the resource file into a local dictionary. You must use RunWithElevatedPrivileges because the new "resources" folder that is created is only accessable by the AppPool account.