Setting Culture for ASP.NET MVC application on VS dev server and IIS

Question

This is more specific and cleaner version of this question - Different DateTimeFormat for dev and test environment

In the Application_BeginRequest()

Answer 1

Well, I didn't actually find what IIS setting is responsible, but I've overridden it in Application_PreRequestHandlerExecute() and it finally worked:

Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture = CultureInfo.CreateSpecificCulture("en-GB");

Answer 2

Rather than setting the Thread's culture, you can specify it in the web.config like so:

<configuration>
    <system.web>
        <globalization uiCulture="en-GB" culture="en-GB" />
    </system.web>
</configuration>

That is a more "proper" way of specifying the culture in ASP.NET.

Answer 3

To set a default Culture for your App in MVC, you can easily add this route in your RouteConfig class:

 foreach (var route in routes.Cast<Route>().Where(route =>
 route.GetType() == typeof(MultiLingualRoute)))
             {
                 route.Url = "{language}/" + route.Url;
                 route.Defaults.Add("language", "YOUR-DEFAULT");

             }

Answer 4

I think it is a good option to just let the client (i.e. user agent / browser) decide what culture he wants. This can be done by setting the culture and uiCulture attribute of the globalization element in web.config to auto. See "Version 1".

You can also do something like: Take the broswers setting, but if not possbile use en-US as fallback value. See "Version 2".

Version 1:

<configuration>
   <system.web>    
      <globalization culture="auto" uiCulture="auto"/>
   </system.web>
</configuration>

Version 2:

<configuration>
   <system.web>    
       <globalization culture="auto:en-US" uiCulture="auto:en-US" />
   </system.web>
</configuration>

See also this article for more info: Auto Detecting and Setting ASP.NET Locale based on Browser Locale