Building PO Databases

To set up automatic PO database building, add the following post-build task to your project, after adding i18n.PostBuild.exe as a project reference:

    "$(TargetDir)i18n.PostBuild.exe" "$(ProjectDir)\web.config"

Right-click on your project > Properties > Build Events:

Alternatively, you may choose to install the i18n.POTGenerator.vsix Visual Studio extension (2012/2013). This installs an i18n button in the Solution Window for manual triggering of PO generation. Note that it is necessary to highlight the project in question within the Solution Window before pressing the button.

The PO generator will rip through your source code (as defined by the i18n.DirectoriesToScan and i18n.WhiteList settings in web.config), finding every nugget, and uses this to build a master .POT template file located at locale/messages.potrelative to your web application folder.

After the new template is constructed, any locales that exist inside the locale folder (or as defined by the i18n.AvailableLanguages semi-colon-delimited web.config setting) are automatically merged with the template, so that new strings can be flagged for further translation.

From here, you can use any of the widely available PO editing tools (like POEdit) to provide locale-specific text and place them in your locale folder relative to the provided language, e.g. locale/fr.

If you change a PO file on the fly, i18n will update accordingly; you do not need to restart your application. Note that the locale-specific file must be named messages.po. For example, your locale folder structure will be similar to (three languages, fr, es, and es-MX are defined):

locale/messages.pot
locale/fr/messages.po
locale/es/messages.po
locale/es-MX/messages.po