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Resharper - localizable string literals

Everyone who has ever tried to create multilingual application knows, that this is very tedious task. The most repetitive work is usually moving hard-coded strings to resource files. Fortunately with Resharper this is definitelly less painfull than usuall. In order to point out localizable parts of application , it is necessary to decorate classes with System.ComponentModel.LocalizableAttribute.

LocalizableAttribute

However, usually we want to localize an entire program, so more universal solution is to set appropriate project configuration in properties window. To bring up this window, select project file and then press F4 button.

PropertiesWindow

From now on, Resharper shows warnings indicating that our hard-coded strings might be moved to resource file. Pressing ALT+ENTER on these strings will bring up the context menu action, where new option - Move to resource is available.

MoveToResourceContextAction

Choosing this option will bring up the Move to Resource window. However if we do not have any resource files in our project, we will get this message.

NoResourcesFound

In order to create these files, right click on project and choose Add->New Item. Now, select Resource.resx file and name it for example LocalizableStrings.resx.

AddingsResource

In this resource file we will store values for our default language. Supporting more languages require us to create additional LocalizableString files with appropriate LETF tags suffixes.

Allfiles

Now, we are able to move our hard-coded string to resource files.

MoveToResource aftermove

By default Resharper adds hard-coded strings to default resource file, so we have to specify values for localizable string for other languages. In order to do that, first navigate to resource entry in LocalizableStrings.resx file by holding CTRL and clicking property Program_Main_This_is_localizable_string

GoToProperty

overriden

and then press ALT+ENTER and choose Override 'PropertyName…'. This operation brings up Edit Resource window where You can easily navigate between resource files and update given resource property

EditResourceDialog

Resharper not only is able to move strings to resource files but also can use existing ones. This basically means that if we use hard-coded string which already has been added to resource file, Resharper will suggest to use predefined resource

localizable string