Sample code for getting ELK cultures on other platforms

by Michael S. Kaplan, published on 2006/04/20 03:01 -04:00, original URI: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/michkap/archive/2006/04/20/579579.aspx

Talking about ELKs (Enabling Language Kits) again, those cool things that provide new locales outside of operating system upgrades that I first mentioned in Lions and tigers and bearsELKs, Oh my! way back in January of last year.

More recently, in ELK cultures for other platforms, I answered a question about how to take one of those ELK locales that becomes a Windows Only Culture in the .NET Framework and get it onto a machine that does not contain that locale, such as Windows Server 2003 or Windows 2000 or NT 4.0 or even Windows 98/Me.

But Dave Sussman asked in a comment to that post:

We've hit the same problem with a requirement for Welsh locale support in an ASP.NET 2.0 web application. You don't explain how you create the LDML file and import it into server 2003 - any pointers?

Thanks

dave

So I figured providing a bit of sample code that showed how to do it might be in order....

We will be using the CultureAndRegionInfoBuilder Class, and the following members:

• LoadDataFromCultureInfo -- fills a CultureAndRegionInfoBuilder object with data from a CultureInfo object;
• LoadDataFromRegionInfo -- fills a CultureAndRegionInfoBuilder object with data from a RegionInfo object;
• Save -- persists a CultureAndRegionInfoBuilder object to LDML;
• CreateFromLdml -- Creates a CultureAndRegionInfoBuilder object from an LDML file;
• Register -- Installs the custom culture in a CultureAndRegionInfoBuilder object to a machine as a new custom culture.

Basically, there are two bits of code to run, one on the XP SP2 machine (or whatever machine contains the locale from which you are getting data):

using System;
using System.Globalization;

namespace Testing {
    class Test {
        [STAThread]
        static void Main(string[] args) {
            CultureAndRegionInfoBuilder carib = new CultureAndRegionInfoBuilder("cy-GB", CultureAndRegionModifiers.Replacement);
            carib.LoadDataFromCultureInfo(new CultureInfo("cy-GB", false));
            carib.LoadDataFromRegionInfo(new RegionInfo("cy-GB"));
            carib.Save(@"c:\cy-GB.ldml");
        }
    }
}

And then the following code on Server 2003 (or whatever version of Windows does not have the locale in question):

using System;
using System.Globalization;

namespace Testing {
    class Test {
        [STAThread]
        static void Main(string[] args) {
            CultureAndRegionInfoBuilder carib = CultureAndRegionInfoBuilder.CreateFromLdml(@"c:\cy-GB.ldml");
            carib.Register();
        }
    }
}

Now to compile these two binaries from the command line, remember to add the reference to sysglobl.dll with the following line:

csc /r:sysglobl.dll welsh.cs

And then you are all set, and you can use the culture in your managed code using version 2.0 of the .NET Framework!

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# Mike on 20 Apr 2006 1:23 PM:

# Michael S. Kaplan on 20 Apr 2006 2:32 PM:

# Andy Brown on 29 May 2006 7:35 PM:

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