c# Web API localization

Question

The title is a little misleading. I have to build a new Web API application to service a bunch of different clients that we are also building. I don't need the parameters or the routes in the API localized.

Basically the clients will ask for a resource in a specified language and the web api will return the results.

My only requirement is that the localization resources will be stored in a SQL DB and not resource files.

Being that the Web API is only returning localized results and it doesn't need to be localized, should I try to be following .NET localization practices or should I just create a simple, cached table lookup function mimicking localization routines?

Answer 1

Technically speaking how you save the localized information at the server side doesn't matter to the client application (calling the API). You can save it in a database or you can save it in resource files; all depends on the architecture of the system.

But you can solve your requirements in two ways:

1. Put locale in the api url: The client application can supply the appropriate locale as below:

GET https://apiserver.com/api/v1.0.0/en-GB/cities

GET https://apiserver.com/api/v1.0.0/fr-CA/cities

GET https://apiserver.com/api/v1.0.0/en-US/cities

At the server side you can configure your method as below:

[Route("v1.0.0/{locale}/cities")]
[HttpGet]
public List<City> GetCities(string locale)
{
    // Get cities by locale
    return cities;
}

2. Pass the locale information in HTTP header. At the server side read the locale passed on in the header and send across response accordingly:

    public WebRequest GetWebRequest(Uri uri) { WebRequest request = base.GetWebRequest(uri); request.Headers.Add("locale", "en-GB"); return request; }