asp.net mvc multilanguage urls/routing

Question

This is a two part question regarding asp.net mvc multilanguage urls/routing and SEO best practices/benefits…

Question Part 1)

I’m being asked to create a new ASP.NET MVC website that will support a minimum (at first) of two languages (English and French) perhaps in the future, 3 languages…

As far as localizing the application (labels, jQuery errors, etc) things should be ok using resource files and I’ve found many examples on this…but my concern/question is more about the URLs.

In terms of SEO, what is the recommended approach between these two fashions?

Fashion 1 (no culture folder)  
www.mydomain.com/create-account 
www.mydomain.com/creer-un-compte

Fashion 2 (with built in culture folder)
www.mydomain.com/create-account 
www.mydomain.com/fr/creer-un-compte <--notice the “fr” folder 

Is there a known issue/penalty in using one over the other?

Or is it so small that it becomes irrelevant!

---

Question Part 2)

To achieve Fashion 2, I’ve already found an article here: ASP.NET MVC - Localization route

But I’d be curious to find how to achieve Fashion 1.

Does anyone have any links?

In addition and as far as I know, URL Rewriting is not what I’m looking for since I do not wish to “redirect” users…I simply want the urls to be showing in the appropriate language without having to show the culture in the url

Thanks in advance for any help on this!

Answer 1

you can create base controller that have the localization logic as below:

 public abstract class LocalizedController : Controller
 {
     protected override void ExecuteCore()
     {
         HttpCookie cookie;
         string lang = GetCurrentCulture();
         Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentUICulture = new CultureInfo(lang, false);

         // set the lang value into route data
         RouteData.Values["lang"] = lang;

         // save the location into cookie
         cookie = new HttpCookie("DPClick.CurrentUICulture",
             Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentUICulture.TwoLetterISOLanguageName)
             {
                 Expires = DateTime.Now.AddYears(1)
             };

         HttpContext.Response.SetCookie(cookie);  
         base.ExecuteCore();
     }

     private  string  GetCurrentCulture()
     {
         string lang;

         // set the culture from the route data (url)

         if (RouteData.Values["lang"] != null &&
            !string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(RouteData.Values["lang"].ToString()))
         {
             lang = RouteData.Values["lang"].ToString();
             if (Localization.Locales.TryGetValue(lang, out lang))
             {
                 return lang;
             }
         }
         // load the culture info from the cookie
         HttpCookie cookie = HttpContext.Request.Cookies["DPClick.CurrentUICulture"];
         if (cookie != null)
         {
             // set the culture by the cookie content
             lang = cookie.Value;
             if (Localization.Locales.TryGetValue(lang, out lang))
             {
                 return lang;
             }

         }
         // set the culture by the location if not speicified
         lang = HttpContext.Request.UserLanguages[0];
         if (Localization.Locales.TryGetValue(lang, out lang))
         {
             return lang;
         }
         //English is default
         return Localization.Locales.FirstOrDefault().Value;

     }

 }

The above controller satisfy fashion 2 of your question if you want to ignore the culture folder just don't assign the lang in the RouteDate. offcourse to achieve fashion 2 you have to add routing for culture as below:

            routes.MapRoute(
            "Localization", // Route name
            "{lang}/{controller}/{action}/{id}", // URL with parameters
            new {controller = "Default", action = "Index", id = UrlParameter.Optional}, // Parameter defaults
            new {lang = @"w{2,3}(-w{4})?(-w{2,3})?"}
            );