Localization of DisplayNameAttribute

Question

I am looking for a way to localize properties names displayed in a PropertyGrid. The property's name may be "overriden" using the DisplayNameAttribute attribute. Unfortunately attributes can not have non constant expressions. So I can not use strongly typed resources such as:

class Foo
{
   [DisplayAttribute(Resources.MyPropertyNameLocalized)]  // do not compile
   string MyProperty {get; set;}
}

I had a look around and found some suggestion to inherit from DisplayNameAttribute to be able to use resource. I would end up up with code like:

class Foo
{
   [MyLocalizedDisplayAttribute("MyPropertyNameLocalized")] // not strongly typed
   string MyProperty {get; set;}
}

However I lose strongly typed resource benefits which is definitely not a good thing. Then I came across DisplayNameResourceAttribute which may be what I'm looking for. But it's supposed to be in Microsoft.VisualStudio.Modeling.Design namespace and I can't find what reference I am supposed to add for this namespace.

Anybody know if there's a easier way to achieve DisplayName localization in a good way ? or if there is as way to use what Microsoft seems to be using for Visual Studio ?

Answer 1

There is the Display attribute from System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations in .NET 4. It works on the MVC 3 PropertyGrid.

[Display(ResourceType = typeof(MyResources), Name = "UserName")]
public string UserName { get; set; }

This looks up a resource named UserName in your MyResources .resx file.