What cultures are supported by the CultureInfo class in .NET 3.5?

Question

I need a list of cultures that are supported by .NET 3.5, regardless of the OS used. This seems to be quite a struggle to obtain, though I am not sure why!

Edit: Arghh, I was not aware that it is dependent on the OS, that would explain the lack of documentation. Any ideas on what is supported by Mac/Linux OS as well?

Thanks :)

Malevolent

Out of curiosity, why do you need the list? – Victimize

Just to work out what langauges we will have to create custom cultures for and what we can use 'out of the box'. For example, I was recently asked whether Welsh is supported. – Malevolent

Don't forget that what CultureInfo supplies is basically just a few strings (name in three languages, ISO codes, currency name) and the date and number formatting. The latter doesn't require specialized cultures in most cases, since they're the same for most related cultures (i.e. most European countries have the same number formatting). So the question is, do you need a Welsh culture, or do you just need Welsh translations? By the way, while that won't solve your general problem, cy-GB is available in CultureInfo as a specific culture. Someone asking for Welsh support will likely have a... – Victimize

... computer that has Welsh support installed, or is at least from a related region. As already said, it's unfortunate not to have Culture Explorer 2.0 available anymore... – Victimize

I found Culture Explorer 2.0 in all its glory on Waybach Machine! – Comparator

Answer 1

Unfortunately, it is OS dependent. Check here for default language support per OS.

Note, the CultureInfo documentation warns:

Windows versions or service packs can change the available cultures.

In ASP.NET, it's the browser that's important versus the OS. It can tell you which language the user prefers via the Accept-Language (Section 14.4) request header. If you set your app's globalization configuration to enableClientBasedCulture="true", ASP.NET will try to automatically set the UICulture and Culture to the value provided by the browser. Alternatively, you can set Culture manually by inspecting the Request.UserLanguages property:

• How to: Set the Culture and UI Culture for ASP.NET Web Page Globalization
• Rick Strahl shows manual detection and setting

Unfortunately, there's no way to generate an exhaustive list of possible languages from an OS or browser. The closest thing is the IANA Language Subtag Registry. This is the language registry described in RFC 4646 - the document that defines .NET's CultureInfo tags.

Keep in mind, language tags in Request.UserLanguages are not guaranteed to be valid. You'll want to check them. HTTP 1.1 uses an older recommendation for language tags and there's nothing stopping someone from sending gibberish in the language header.

Shovelboard

If it is an ASP.NET app, I presume you mean that it is based on the OS of the server hosting the site? – Malevolent

In ASP.NET, the browser provides the preferred language. I'll update my answer with relevant resources. – Shovelboard

Answer 2

National Language Support (NLS) API Reference lists locale information and allows you to select the OS.

Microsoft Locale Builder is a tool to create custom locales for Windows Vista and later.

Get a list of supported cultures, including custom ones, for the OS.

C# Example,

System.Globalization.CultureInfo[] cultures = System.Globalization.CultureInfo.GetCultures(System.Globalization.CultureTypes.AllCultures);

Exude

Answer 3

It is possible to create custom cultures, but the default class supports those cultures provided by the operating system you're running on. There is a reference of the cultures supported by default on MSDN

Protactinium

If it is an ASP.NET app, I presume you mean that it is based on the OS of the server hosting the site? – Malevolent

@Fiona 'fraid so -- it would be possible for a client to connect with a culture that the server doesn't understand (perhaps "en-scouse") – Protactinium

Answer 4

I just checked with Culture Explorer 2.0, there is a distinction between Windows-only cultures and installed cultures, as well as .NET Framework cultures (which, at least on my system, only contain language-only cultures). All of these are supported by the CultureInfo class (and RegionInfo, NumberFormatInfo and so on).

I also ran it on Mono (on Linux), it's roughly the same, with the .NET Framework cultures and the Windows-Only cultures missing, but the Specific and Neutral cultures are there. RegionInfo.CurrencyNativeName seems not to be implemented in my Mono version though, so it crashes when selecting any culture.

Unfortunately, Culture Explorer 2.0 is currently not available from anywhere (was on gotdotnet.com), I downloaded it some time ago. It's a handy tool for such things. You may have luck to find one in some archives.

Victimize

microsoft.com/middleeast/arabicdev/DevTools/VSdotNET/samples/… – Jasper

@erikkallen: That's the first version of the tool. It doesn't have all the categories and only supports .NET Invariant country, specific language cultures. I don't know about the license of Culture Explorer 2.0 - maybe I can later upload it to CodePlex. – Victimize

I found Culture Explorer 2.0 in all its glory on Waybach Machine! – Comparator