How to localize data attribute in MVC3?

Posted on: April 29, 2012

If you are using the Data Annotation with Asp.Net MVC you might need to localize the message from these annotation.

Here is an example:

1public class Person { 
2  [Required(ErrorMessage="FirstName is required")] 
3  public string FirstName { get; set; } 
4  //... 
5}

If you want to have the Data Annotation translated in many languages, you should use two others properties that are : ErrorMessageResourceType and ErrorMessageResourceName. This will let you specify the resource type and the resouce name which is the key of inside the resource file.

1public class Person { 
2  [Required(ErrorMessageResourceType=typeof(MyResourcesNameSpace.ResourcesFile), ErrorMessageResourceName="FirstNameRequiredKey")] 
3  public string FirstName { get; set; } 
4  //... 
5}

This way, you will have your application localized from the Model to the View without any problem.