Override standard xml files

Sometimes I want to change the wording used in mojoPortal for things like the headings above the blog categories or the text chosen to go above the "comments" section.

Instead of forking my code, is it at all possible to set up an "override xml" file, that I could add into my mojoPortal root and it would override the data in the xml file that provides this text? A link to the XML file used could be added as a key in the web.config, perhaps?

I know it's possible to change the text with jQuery and even CSS (:before pseudo selector and negative text indent), but I'd rather not do jQuery because if JS is disabled it won't work and not the CSS fix for semantic reasons.

This would be useful in a lot of places for people who are particular about text content.

Thanks for all your work with mojoPortal, it's a great CMS.
-Isaac

Hi Crispin,

I'm already aware of that, I've been using it to change things. What I'm asking for is the ability to include an override .resx file so that I won't have to fork the code. Basically, it would be a single file that I could change all of the text resources in and it would not be overwritten by updates, only the originals would.

This is useful because after changing the default text on 40-50 different items around the site, it gets to be quite a pain to change them back on update. It's not super-important, but I am particular about wording, and I thought perhaps other people have the same problem. =]

It would be even more awesome if this was somehow capable of being included in a skin, that way when we're designing we can change things to make them match the design a bit better. Not sure if that's possible though.

Thanks for your response,
-Isaac

Hey guys,

Thanks for looking into this. Joe, my idea was mostly for design purpose, and it's not especially important. I was just asking to see if an easy fix could be found, but if not I'll only change the .resx files on my site and I'll just keep a copy of them for upgrades.

The value of changing labels is small but significant in my opinion. Mostly because users are accustomed to seeing specific text in specific places - when they see a form, they're expecting some kind of "submit" button, but I don't want the wording to be that bland. So instead, I often want it to say "Proceed" or something of that sort. Or above blog comments, instead of the heading just saying "Comments", I'd like it to say "Share your mind" - something that fits with the writing style of the rest of the content on the page.

It's kind of a supplement for designs, but I think it can make a site more friendly and more unique simultaneously. Like I said, it's not extremely important though. But if you ever come up with a way to do it without forking the code, please let us know.

Thanks,
-Isaac

Consider that the built in localization support of the ASP.NET framework is awesome.
By storing the files in the /App_GlobalResources folder I get strongly typed objects to set my labels like this:
litHeading.Text = BlogResources.BlogCategoriesLabel;

I don't have to do anything to make it localize, by default the thread will execute as the culture specified in the browser preferred language and it will automatically choose the correct .resx file if it exists (or by config settings you can force it to execute as a specific culture), so if my browsert is set to de-DE for German and BlogResources.de.resx exists it will use that and if the key "BlogCategoriesLabel" does not exist in that file it will fall back to the default English file. I get all that for free, no hunting around the file system no checking for missing files or keys needed in my code and the key must exist in the defualt file for it to compile so errors are avoided.

Similarly there is a databinding syntax like this:
<asp:DropDownList ID="ddGMapType" runat="server" EnableTheming="false" CssClass="forminput">
<asp:ListItem Value="G_NORMAL_MAP" Text="<%$ Resources:Resource, GoogleNormalMap %>" />
<asp:ListItem Value="G_SATELLITE_MAP" Text="<%$ Resources:Resource, GoogleSatelliteMap %>" />
<asp:ListItem Value="G_HYBRID_MAP" Text="<%$ Resources:Resource, GoogleHybridMap %>" />
<asp:ListItem Value="G_PHYSICAL_MAP" Text="<%$ Resources:Resource, GoogleTerrainMap %>" />
</asp:DropDownList>

again I don't have to do anything extra to make it localize.

Now do I want to throw that away and build my own thing that I have to support? NO!!!! That would be a lot of work and a huge re-write of good solid working code.

But on a case by case basis I'm willing to do things like this:

if (displaySettings.OverrideCategoryLabel.Length > 0)
{
litHeading.Text = displaySettings.OverrideCategoryLabel;
}
else
{
litHeading.Text = BlogResources.BlogCategoriesLabel;
}

I don't want to try to keep track of which files were changed, that is to much burden that would slow down progress and make myself and other devs reluctant to make changes for beaurocratic reasons and it is likely that I and others would fail at that and forget some of the files that changed. During upgrade users should assume all files were changed, otherwise it is very likely that strange hard to diagnose bugs will happen if people don't update all the files that need to be updated. I think some people have used diff tools to do that occasionally but I think the safest bet is to update all the files. I update all the files when upgrading my own sites.

Note that you should not replace a .resx file with an older version or you may end up with missing keys that were added to the new one, so unfortunately you must re-edit any changes you make to new .resx files.

Therefore I would be very judicious about which labels you promise to change for your customers to keep that to a minimum and work with me to make the case for the ones that really really need to have an override option because they are so commonly requested to be changed by customers for valid reasons that make sense. Some customers will ask for all kinds of things that are not really reasonable so its a judgement thing and I think sometimes pushback is needed for the customer's benefit to avoid those maintenance issues with resx files.

.resx files are indeed compiled by the asp.net compiler into classes behind the scenes at application startup, that is why we started shipping most additional languages in a separate download to reduce the amount compilation. But there is not a good way to put them in other places, the designated location of /App_GlobalResources is a special asp.net folder and is what makes it possible to have strongly typed resource objects that provide intellisense and make it trivial to localize strings. As soon as we add a new key in the resx file we get intellisense for the new key in code. We can always wish for more magic but it really is already doing a lot of heavy lifting for us already so its best to work with the grain of the existing localization framework built into asp.net rather than work against the grain and make it more complicated.

Best,

Joe

Hey Joe, would you be willing to share your robocopy site update scripts? I think a lot of people would find them really useful.

Jamie

Joe, your answer gave me an idea.

Basically, the code already reads a different language file and resolves to a default file if the key isn't found in the other language file. This is the functionality we need, so it begs the question - is it possible to sort of 'fool' the code into thinking you're using another language file?

If so, we could make our own language file that's really just an override file, then declare what language we want the site to render in, and it would read that file first, render any keys given there, and then check the default file for keys that are missing. This way we could only change whatever labels we wanted and wouldn't need to update the file with mojo.

The main thing I think we would need is a way to declare our 'language' in the web.config or something, such that it tells the code to look for that language's xml file first.

I don't understand the code behind mojoPortal very well, so please forgive me if this is a stupid question.

Thanks,
-Isaac

Actually the more I think about it the more clever and brilliant that idea seems.

Skip the Klingon and choose an obscure langauge that we don't support and aren't likely to. Create .resx files for that language that only have the things you want to override then force it to use that culture. Technically you could use any language that you don't care to support in your site and for which you are not deploying the resx files we ship even if it is a supported language, but safer to pick something more obscure.

Fanatastic creative idea Isaac!

Best,

Joe

Alright, I've managed to get this working on my site.

I decided to use Konkani because it's at the bottom of this list.
Steps are as follows:

1. Duplicate the resource file you want to change. I changed blogresources.resx in my case.
2. Rename the file to use the language extension you want, as found in the link Joe shared.
3. Open the user.config and add your override code as found here. In my case I added two keys:
   <add key="UseCultureOverride" value="true" />
   <add key="site1uiculture" value="kok" />
   It is important to note that you should probably only use the uiculture for this, so your date and time format strings aren't changed.
4. Change your new resource file to include what keys you want. It is probably a good idea to remove all of the keys except for the ones you want to change.

A really great aspect about this method is that mojoPortal already supports using different cultures for each site in your mojo installation, so it makes it easy even if you have multiple clients on the same install or if you want to use different text for your own different sites.

Thanks again Joe, this will work well for me I think.
-Isaac

The only limitation for this technique is it can only be relied on if English is the default fallback.

It is possible to force a different language as the default from web.config <globalization element, but if you change it there to a language that has any missing keys or files it will cause null reference errors. The only language we have where the resx files are guaranteed to never be missing any files or keys is English.

So for example if I'm forcing my site to French using:

<add key="site1uiculture" value="fr-FR"/>

then I need to keep English as the default so that no errors can happen.

Therefore if I'm forcing the site to use French already I cannot also force it to use another language resx files for overrides.

If I made sure that there were no missing keys or files for French, then I could set the default to French in the <globalization element, and then I could force the site to use a different language and take advantage of this technique. So it isn't impossible, if anything it may encourage more help with keeping translations up to date. (Too bad about Ammanuens going away I wish there was something else equivalent but don't know of anything).

Still this technique can be used by lots of people and it is pretty clever. I will compile the info from this thread into a documentation article soon and give credit to Isaac for the great idea.

As far as which language to override, it only matters whether its a language you might ever care to support in your own site. Since additional languages are downloaded separately it really only matters whether it would ever conflict with a language whose resx files you did want to deploy.

Although recommending a specific one in the article might be fun, like if we use Konkani we could dub this technique the Konkani technique or the Sanscrit technique which might be catchy ;-D

But another idea is to force a variant of English that we won't likely ever have resx files for like en-ZE which is the Zimbabwe variant of English, and if we get visitors from Zimbabwe on our site chances are they will be able to read it just fine anyway.

Definitely the override resx files should only contain the keys you are actually overriding in any case, that way if something changes for an existing key that you are not overriding you will get it from the default English files. Also I think that makes it easier to manage because you know exactly which keys you are overriding when you open one of those files since there are not any keys in there that you are not overriding.

Best,

Joe