ReGenSource 0.4.1

ReGenSource

I hate RESX files.

There. I said it.

I hate them because they are a pain to work with. They are not human-readable, they are not merge-friendly, they are never consistent in tabs/spaces or comments, and they are a pain to manage.

I hate them so much that I decided to write a tool to replace them.

What is ReGenSource?

ReGenSource is a tool that generates source code with localized resources from a JSON file.

How can I use this in my project?

Step one is to create a JSON file with the resources you want to localize. The file name must end with .res.json.

The JSON file must be added to your project file, along with a reference to the ReGenSource package.

<ItemGroup>
    <AdditionalFiles Include="Resources.res.json" />
    <PackageReference Include="ReGenSource" Version="0.1.0-ci.17" />
</ItemGroup>

The JSON file should be structured like this:

{
   "namespace": "MyApp.Resources",
   "class": "MyResources",
   "resources": [
      {
         "name": "Welcome",
         "default": "Welcome to my application",
         "translations": {
            "pt": "Bem-vindo ao meu aplicativo",
            "nb,nn": "Velkommen til min applikasjon"
         }
      }
   ]
}

Namespace

The namespace is the namespace that the generated class will be placed in.

By default, the namespace is ReGenSource.

Class

The class is the name of the class that will be generated.

By default, the class is Resources.

Resources

The resources is an array of resources that will be generated. Each resource has a name, a default value, and a set of translations. The default value is used when no translation is found for the current culture.

CultureDefinition

By default the culture is defined by the Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentUICulture.TwoLetterISOLanguageName property. This is what is compared with the translation languages.

If you need a different way to define the culture, you can add a CultureDefinition property to the JSON file. This property should be a string that will be used as the culture definition in the generated code.

"CultureDefinition": "global::System.Threading.Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentUICulture.TwoLetterISOLanguageName"

ClassAccessModifier

By default the class is generated as a public class. It can however be set as internal by overriding the ClassAccessModifier property:

"ClassAccessModifier": "Internal"

Resources

Name

The name of the resource, used as the property name in the generated class.

Default

This is the translation to fallback to when no other translation is found for the given language.

Translations

Keys support comma-separated values to allow for multiple languages to be used for the same translation.