C#: Resource file refactoring

Question

Does anyone know of a good tool for refactoring resources in a visual studio 2008 solution?

We have a number of resource files with translated text in an assembly used for localizing our application. But they have gotten a bit messy... I would like to rename some of the keys, and move some of them into other resource files. And I would like those changes be done in my code, and the translated versions of the resource files as well. Maybe a some analysis on what strings are missing in the translated versions, and what strings have been removed from the original as well...

Does anyone know of a good visual studio extension or ReSharper plugin that can help me with this? Right now it is kind of a pain, because I have to first rename the key in the base resource file, then in the localized versions. And then compile to get all the compile errors resulting from the key which now have a different name, and then go through and fix them all... very annoying =/

Answer 1

Seems to be some new features in ReSharper 5 that helps with this

Localizing your Applications with ReSharper 5

This demo shows how ReSharper 5 helps you make strings in your code localizable quickly, without breaking your regular workflow. Working with resource files is no more a developer's nightmare with ReSharper 5.

Answer 2

I just stumbled across this question which prompted me to blog about what I use for this problem here Moving and renaming resource keys in a .resx file.

I have two PowerShell scripts, one which renames a resource key and one which moves a resource key from one resource file to another.

Using these scripts I am able to rename a resource key:

.\RenameResource.ps1 oldKey newKey

And I can move a resource with key “keyName” from a file named “ResourceFile1.resx” to “ResourceFile2.resx”:

.\MoveResource.ps1 ResourceFile1 ResourceFile2 keyName

Answer 3

RGreatEx is suitable when you need to move a lot of strings in code to resources. But in this case it can't help.
There are no such plugin (*this means that I have never seen such and didn't found in google, but there are some localizators which can help to translate to new language - http://www.peoplewords.com/download/ResxEditor.aspx and http://sourceforge.net/projects/resx/ and http://www.resx-localization-studio.net/ and http://madskristensen.net/post/A-NET-resource-editor-application-for-resx-files.aspx). But you easily (may be) can do this without it.
All you need is to write some small tool which will generate common dictionary of strings for a selected language for several selected resx files and store it somewhere. Another tool you need to create is a tool which will generate new resx files (after your changes) using changed resxs as templates and using the dictionary generated by previous tool.
Of course all new and changed strings will be missing but this can be fixed manually. This will take not so much time (especially when you'll add functionality to write a log of missing strings during generation new resx) .

Answer 4

Were looking into Sisulizer to localize our software, and I think it accomplishes what you're asking for (a bit overkill perhaps?)