CODEWITHSUNDEEP
wpf
jglouie
jglouie

Reputation: 12880

How to use WPF to display localizable and dynamic text?

I'm new to WPF and trying to mash together some concepts I'm reading about.

What I'm trying to do is a build a localizable UI. For simplicity, let's say I am building a UI with string: "The file takes up 2 GB in disk space."

The "2 GB" portion is dynamic. The value could change depending upon the file the user selects. Secondly, a conversion should take from ulong (file size bytes) to string (friendly size, using appropriate units e.g. KB, MB, GB, TB, etc.).

I was thinking an IValueConverter would be most appropriate for the byte count to friendly-file-size conversion. I was also thinking that I'd store "The file takes up {0} in disk space." as a string resource.

I'm not sure the IValueConverter will be of use here. Can it be used with String.Format()? I don't see how it could be used in a binding directly, because we're inserting the conversion result into the localizable text template.

Is there a better way to approach this?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 442

Answers (2)

tcables
tcables

Reputation: 1307

Use this handy bytes name to text converter and an IValueConverter

Converting bytes to GB in C#?

    private string formatBytes(float bytes)
        {
            string[] Suffix = { "B", "KB", "MB", "GB", "TB" };
            int i;
            double dblSByte=0;
            for (i = 0; (int)(bytes / 1024) > 0; i++, bytes /= 1024)
                dblSByte = bytes / 1024.0;
            return String.Format("{0:0.00} {1}", dblSByte, Suffix[i]);
        }

public class BytesSuffixConverter : IValueConverter
{
    public object Convert(object value, Type targetType, object parameter, CultureInfo culture)
    {
        float bytes = (float)value;
        return formatBytes(bytes);
    }

    public object ConvertBack(object value, Type targetType, object parameter, CultureInfo culture)
    {
        throw new Exception("Not Supported.");
    }
}

Upvotes: 1

brunnerh
brunnerh

Reputation: 184376

Bindings have a StringFormat property, you should be able to use that if you can somehow reference your localized string (possibly using a custom markup extension).

Upvotes: 1

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