CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c#wcflocalization
Stephen Drew
Stephen Drew

Reputation: 1422

Localization in a WCF server

I am fairly well versed in using localization in a simple WPF UI application.

I am now in the process of developing a WCF client/server architecture; I want to be able to create various types of exception in the server, and have the error message in the culture of the client.

This seems straightforward enough - somehow we will identify the culture being used by the particular WCF client at the time.

However, I want the messages to potentially also be logged into the server's logfile in one language (typically English) to allow easier support of the application.

There are various assemblies used in both the server and the client side; each assembly is going to have a string table of error messages. Therefore when an exception is created, it needs to have the resource ID and the resource manager for that given assembly to hand. Without sub-classing each available exception type, I cannot see how to get around this. This seems like a lot of work for a problem that has surely been encountered before?

Example

Server.A.dll

Error Resources: MyErrorString1, MyErrorString2
Resource Manager: ResourceManagerA

Server.B.dll

Error Resources: MyErrorString3
Resource Manager: ResourceManagerB

So ideally I need to have access to the resource manager for a given string at the time I need to either log the message to the file or send it back over WCF as a fault; but I don't want to lose the ability to catch types of exceptions by using one generic exception class.

Does anyone have any experience of this problem, or any cool suggestions on how to go about implementing it?

Thanks in advance,
Steve

Upvotes: 1

Views: 1281

Answers (2)

Johann Blais
Johann Blais

Reputation: 9469

If it is a technical exception, there is no need for details that the user won't understand anyway. Just display a generic error message.

As for expected error condition, they should be cataloged somewhere. Then you just need to exchange error codes between client and server and do the localization on the client based on the error code.

Upvotes: 1

Paweł Dyda
Paweł Dyda

Reputation: 18662

I don't think that is good idea to show plain Exception messages to users. Instead, I would catch them log them and show friendly message in UI. That way you won't need to subclass anything...

Upvotes: 3

Related Questions