Globalisation with jQuery

Posted on by

Download Sample application

Introduction

Recently, Microsoft announced three jQuery plugins as Official plugin.

  • jQuery Client Templating
  • Data linking
  • Globalization

I found all of them very cool feature for web development.
I have already written articles about the first two. Please find the link below.

I think, you all must have found the above articles very useful and will be using in near future or some of you might have started using this. I would request you all that to share your views about the article, which will be very helpful for me in better writing.

Now, In this article, I am going to discuss the last feature that is Globalization. When we say Globalization, the thing that comes in our mind is resource files. ASP.NET itself provides very good facility to cater the needs of Globalization.But which requires a postback, so it doesn’t look nice and not good in performance as well.

jQuery also provides us a way to implement the globalization, with supported plugin.

Again, I am writing few common points that I wrote in my last two Articles, for the new readers.

What is Globalization

As per MSDN “Globalization is the process of designing and developing
applications that function for multiple cultures.”

So Globalization allows us to develop an application, which provides the option to localize the application in different cultures/languages. Now as we are working in global environment and serving the entire world, it becomes the necessity, to provide the globalization feature to our application.

So in this article, I am going to discuss, How we can provide the Globalization feature with the help of jQuery.

Prerequisite

  • jQuery library
  • Plugin for Globalization

jQuery already comes with VS2008/2010. But if you are working VS 2005 then you can download from the following link.

Download jQuery

To download plugin for Globalization,
click here

Globalization with jQuery:

So in this article, I am going to discuss, How we can utilise the Globalization feature of jQuery.

jQuery provides us the power to format and parse date, number and currencies in different cultures.  jQuery plugin defines over 350 cultures that currently supported by the plugin.

There are languages those are common in few regions/countries, but the formatting of numbers, currencies and date varies. Like English is spoken in several countries USA, UK and other various European countries. For these we have several cultures defined, that is used to identify the uniqueness amongst these countries.

This plugin comes in two flavors.

One file jQuery.glob.all.js includes around 350 cultures currently. So with this we need to include only this file for all
the cultures supported by the plugin. Another way,Plugin has also culture specific js files, that can included based on cultures that are supported by the application.

Some common APIs of the Plugin:

jQuery.culture:This holds the culture information that is currently set and is used in default case, i e while formatting various values this culture is used if no culture is specified.

jQuery.preferCulture:This method is used set the culture that user prefers and this culture is used for all the formatting, parsing etc done on the page. Actually as the method name suggests, it selects the best match culture that’s JavaScript is included in the page.

jQuery.format:
This method is used to format the date, number and currency in the given format string. This method is widely used.

jQuery.findClosestCulture:
This method works in similar way as preferCulture but it returns the best matching culture and don’t set the jQuery.culture to it.

jQuery.localize:
This method allows us to extend the specific culture and returns or set
the localized value.

There are many more functions like jQuery.parseInt, jQuery.parseFloat, jQuery.parseDate etc provided by the plugin, that can be used for several specific purposes.I have discussed some of them.

Let’s see some Examples:

Here In this section, I’ll be showing you some examples.

First Example:: In this example, I am displaying the stock deatils of Infosys on a specific date. It includes the price and number of unit sold on a specific date in two different cultures. Let’s see the running application.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now lets move to the code. First let’s see the aspx code

<table style="border:1px solid black; font-family:Verdana; font-size:small">
            <tr>
                <td colspan="2"><h3>English - US</h3></td>
            </tr>
            <tr>
                <td>Stock Name</td>
                <td><span id="Text1" >Infosys</span></td>
            </tr>
            <tr>
                <td>Stock Price </td>
                <td><span id="price"/></td>
            </tr>
            <tr>
                <td>Day</td>
                <td><span id="date"/></td>
            </tr>
            <tr>
                <td>Units Transacted</td>
                <td><span id="unitsTransacted" /></td>
            </tr>
            <tr>
                <td colspan="2"><h3>France - French </h3></td>
            </tr>
            <tr>
                <td>Stock Name</td>
                <td><span id="Span1">Infosys</span></td>
            </tr>
            <tr>
                <td>Stock Price </td>
                <td><span id="price1"/></td>
            </tr>
            <tr>
                <td>Date</td>
                <td><span id="date1"/></td>
            </tr>
            <tr>
                <td>Units Transacted</td>
                <td><span id="unitsTransacted1" /></td>
            </tr>
        </table>

Above as you can see, I am displaying Stock details Infosys in two different cultures English-US and France-French.
Now lets jump to script. Here the script that I have include. These are

 <script src="scripts/jquery-1.4.2.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
    <script src="scripts/jquery.glob.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
    <script src="scripts/globinfo/jQuery.glob.all.js" type="text/javascript"></script>

So I have included three files here. First the jQuery file the common Global file and last one is the file that contains all culture specific details.
Now rest javascript code is

       // Set culture
        jQuery.preferCulture("en-US");

        // Formatting price
        var price = jQuery.format(3899.888, "c");
        //Assigning stock price to the control
        jQuery("#price").html(price);

        // Formatting date
        var date = jQuery.format(new Date(2010, 11, 15), "D");
        //Assigning date to the control
        jQuery("#date").html(date);

        // Formatring units trabsacted
        var units = jQuery.format(45678.576, "n2");
        //Assigning units to the control
        jQuery("#unitsTransacted").html(units);

        // Set culture
        jQuery.preferCulture("fr-FR");

        // Format price
        var price = jQuery.format(3899.888, "c");
        //Assigning stock price to the control
       jQuery("#price1").html(price);

        // Format date available
        var date = jQuery.format(new Date(2010, 11, 15), "D");
        //Assigning date to the control
        jQuery("#date1").html(date);

        // Format units in stock
        var units = jQuery.format(45678.576, "n2");
        //Assigning units to the control
        jQuery("#unitsTransacted1").html(units);

As you can see from the above code, that I have used the preferCulture method to set the culture and format method to format the various data like price, date and units here.

So above one is the simple example which describes that how the plugin works.

Changing culture dynamically:

Now in this example, I am talking about another scenario where user may want to select the culture dynamically, and want to get the page updated accordingly.

In my sample example, I am having one dropdown, user selects the culture and page is getting updated accordingly.
First lets see the application.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now let’s jump on the code.First let’s view the aspx code

 <table style="border:1px solid black; font-family:Verdana; font-size:small">
            <tr>
                <td style="font-weight:bold">Select Culture</td>
                <td>
                    <select id="ddlCultures">
                        <option value="en-US">English - US</option>
                        <option value="en-IN">EngLish - India</option>
                        <option value="en-AU">EngLish - Australia</option>
                        <option value="fr-FR">French - France</option>
                        <option value="es-MX">Spanish - Mexico</option>
                    </select>
                </td>
            </tr>
            <tr>
                <td style="font-weight:bold">Stock Name</td>
                <td> <span id="Text1">Infosys </span></td>
            </tr>
            <tr>
                <td style="font-weight:bold">Stock Price</td>
                <td><span id="price"/></td>
            </tr>
            <tr>
                <td style="font-weight:bold">Day</td>
                <td><span id="date"/></td>
            </tr>
            <tr>
                <td style="font-weight:bold">Units Transacted</td>
                <td><span id="unitsTransacted"/></td>
            </tr>
        </table>

Now let’s see the scripts included

<script src="scripts/jquery-1.4.2.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script src="scripts/jquery.glob.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script src="scripts/globinfo/jQuery.glob.en-US.min.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script src="scripts/globinfo/jQuery.glob.en-IN.min.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script src="scripts/globinfo/jQuery.glob.en-AU.min.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script src="scripts/globinfo/jQuery.glob.fr-FR.min.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script src="scripts/globinfo/jQuery.glob.es-MX.min.js" type="text/javascript"></script>

As you can see above,I have included culture specific files instead of one common files for all the cultures. Because the size of common files for all 350 cultures could be a performance overhead. As we know, that these are specific
cultures that are going to be used in the application, then we should go for culture specific files.

Now javascript code

     LoadPage("en-US");

     jQuery("#ddlCultures").change(function() {
         var selectedCulture = this.value;
         LoadPage(selectedCulture);
     });

        function LoadPage(selectedCulture) {

            jQuery.preferCulture(selectedCulture);

            var price = $.format(3899.888, "c");
            jQuery("#price").html('12345');

            // Format date available
            var date = $.format(new Date(2011, 12, 25), "D");
            jQuery("#date").html(date);

            // Format units in stock
            var units = $.format(45678, "n0");
            jQuery("#unitsTransacted").html(units);
        }

In this code, I have taken a dropdown with multiple cultures. One can select the desired culture and page will be modified accordingly. I have used the same form but I have called preferculture method based on the selection of dropdown.

Rest code is same as above example.

Picking culture info from Browser:

Sometimes user also set culture preferences in the browser. And lots of applications rely on it. So we can also read the culture information from the browser and can load the page accordingly. To get the culture information we
can use the following.

  var language = "<%= Request.UserLanguages[0] %>";
  jQuery.preferCulture(language);

Conclusion:

This feature is very useful for the applications targeting the entire Globe. As you are moving forward for RIA applications, this plugin of jQuery could be key.

Hope you all must have enjoyed my above article. Please share your valuable feedback, that will help me a lot for better writing.

Feedback and Suggestions:

Hope you all must have enjoyed my above article. Please share your valuable feedback, that will help me a lot for better writing.

3 thoughts on “Globalisation with jQuery”

Leave a comment