Does it make sense to create a custom resource.xml instead of using asp.net's Resource .resx implemention?

Question

I will be setting the current thread's culture at the beginning of the request lifecycle.

Does it make sense if I create my own resource.xml to store things like strings/labels/messages that will be used in the web application?

or are their drawbacks and its better if I just use the Global resources .resx files that are 'built-in' ?

Answer 1

Yes, there are a lot of drawbacks.

Mainly, think on new developers that may join your project and they will not be familiarized with your way of thinking. They will be more productive, if you stick with the language standards.

Technical Drawbacks are not as important as they can be surpassed.

Answer 2

It really depends. I work on a project where we have over 30K resource entries and that is really unmanageable for us. Far better to use a custom resource provider and store them in the application db (for OUR application).

If you do choose to use your own resource implementation, you can use your own xml files but I would strongly suggest writing your own resource providers. Then you're still using the .NET mechanism but are switching out the storage.

It does depend on your application and for ours its proving necessary. Not least of which because we need to let the user override language settings but then reset to the default provided version.

Update:

As per the comment question, here is a link to more info:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa905797.aspx