How to getting browser current locale preference using javascript?

javascript internet-explorer firefox google-chrome culture
The Sheek Geek picture The Sheek Geek · Apr 20, 2010 · Viewed 64.5k times · Source

Does anyone know how to obtain the browser culture from Firefox and Google Chrome using javascript? Note: This is an asp.net 3.5 web application.

The requirement is to try and set the application's display culture based on the browser culture. I have found very few bits and pieces of information for the other browsers but they do not seem to work.

I am able to get it in IE with the following snippet of code:

var browserCulture = this.clientInformation.browserLanguage;

Any info would be great!

Answer

bobince picture bobince · Apr 20, 2010

The following properties exist on the navigator object (which can also be known as clientInformation on IE but there's no reason ever to use that name):

  • language (non-IE, browser install language)
  • browserLanguage (IE, browser install language)
  • userLanguage (IE, user-level OS-wide language setting)
  • systemLanguage (IE, OS installation language)

But! You should never use any of these properties! They will be the wrong language in many cases.

None of them reflect the language settings the user actually gets to configure in the browser's ‘preferred languages’ UI, and they are difficult-to-impossible for users to change. You will cause big frustration by using any of these values without an additional easy manual way to switch languages.

The correct place you should sniff to decide what language to use by default, as configured by the normal browser UI, is the Accept-Language header passed to your server in the HTTP request. This is a ranked list of preferred languages from which you can pick, and it's what ASP.NET uses to guess an automatic client Culture, if you use that.

Unfortunately, this property is not available from JavaScript!

What you typically do is use your server side to parse the Accept-Language header and choose a single appropriate language to use from it. In ASP.NET you can get a pre-sorted list from HttpRequest.UserLanguages and pick the first that you like.

You then spit that language name out into a <script> element to pass the language information to the client side.

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