16
votes

I'm using asp.net 3.5, my solution currently has 2 projects, an API class project and a website project, within the class project I have a resource file named checkin.resx. For me to be able to access the resource files from my website project, I had to set the "Access Modifier" to public, this allowed me to use a strongly typed name to acces the resources for example: CkiApi.Checkin.Resources.Checkin.OCKI_HeaderText, where Checkin is the .resx file and OCKI_HeaderText is the resource key.

The problem I'm facing is that I'm unable to access the resources from front end aspx code, for example, setting a text property of a label or a validation error message. I have tried the following syntax to no avail:

<asp:Label AssociatedControlID="IdentMethods" EnableViewState="false" ID="lblIdentMethod" runat="server" Text="<%$ Resources: CkiApi.Checkin.Resources.Checkin, OCKI_IdentificationMethod %>"></asp:Label>

the error I get is

The resource object with key 'OCKI_IdentificationMethod' was not found.

but regardless of what I set the class name to, I get the same error, I'm thinking its because its trying to look in the website project but I can't figure out how to tell it to look at the API! Can anyone help?

I am able to set non server side tags using the following:

<div id="OckiIntroText">
    <%=CkiApi.Checkin.Resources.Checkin.OCKI_IntroText%>
</div>
2

2 Answers

18
votes

Resource expressions (<%$ Resources: ClassKey, ResourceKey %>) use ResourceExpressionBuilder class behind the scene. This class can lookup global and local resources only (in website's App_GlobalResources and App_LocalResources folders).

Instead, you can use CodeExpressionBuilder class to access resources from different project. Here's how to use it.

Add CodeExpressionBuilder class to App_Code folder:

using System.CodeDom;
using System.Web.Compilation;
using System.Web.UI;

[ExpressionPrefix("Code")]
public class CodeExpressionBuilder : ExpressionBuilder
{
   public override CodeExpression GetCodeExpression(BoundPropertyEntry entry,
      object parsedData, ExpressionBuilderContext context)
   {
      return new CodeSnippetExpression(entry.Expression);
   }
}

Add the following to system.web/compilation section in web.config:

<compilation debug="false">
   ...
   <expressionBuilders>
      <add expressionPrefix="Code" type="CodeExpressionBuilder"/>
   </expressionBuilders>
</compilation>

Finally, you can call into strongly-typed class generated for your .resx file:

<asp:Label ID="Label1" runat="server" Text="<%$ Code: ClassLibrary1.Resource1.String1 %>" />
3
votes

Not sure if this will solve your problem but have you looked at the HttpContext.GetGlobalResourceObject method?

I've used it to access resources in the web project, from class libraries in a framework project - so perhaps you will have luck in using it the other way around.