Getting a single language

The localization service contains a number of methods for looking up languages. If you already know the ID of a specific language (eg. the default language has ID 1), you can use the GetLanguageById method to get the reference to that language:

// Get a reference to the language by its ID
ILanguage language1 = _localizationService.GetLanguageById(1);

Alternative, you can look up a language by its iso code via the GetLanguageByIsoCode method:

// Get a reference to the language by its ISO code
ILanguage language2 = _localizationService.GetLanguageByIsoCode("en-US");

The ISO code is a combination of the two-letter ISO 639-1 language code (lowercase) and two-letter ISO-3166 country code (uppercase). Eg. en-US for English in the United States, en-GB for English in the United Kingdom and da-DK for Danish in Denmark.

Both methods will return an instance of the ILanguage interface, which has traditional properties like Id and Key, but also properties specific to the language like CultureName, CultureInfo and IsoCode. You can see the API reference for further information on the properties of the interface.

Getting all languages

If you need instead need a list of all installed languages, you can use the GetAllLanguages method. It takes no parameters, and as such a returns a collection of all languages (with no pagination like some of the other services):

// Get a collection of all languages
IEnumerable<ILanguage> languages = _localizationService.GetAllLanguages();

// Iterate over the collection
foreach (ILanguage language in languages)
{
    // Get the .NET culture info
    CultureInfo cultureInfo = language.CultureInfo;

    <pre>ID: @language.Id</pre>
    <pre>Key: @language.Key</pre>
    <pre>Name: @language.CultureName</pre>
    <pre>ISO: @language.IsoCode</pre>
    <pre>Culture info: @cultureInfo</pre>
    <hr />
}

As shown in the example above, you can get the System.Globalization.CultureInfo instance of each language, which determines how numbers, dates and similar should be either parsed or formatted in .NET.

Full example

Below you can see a full example of the examples shown above - including the necessary imports:

@using System.Globalization
@using Umbraco.Cms.Core.Models
@using Umbraco.Cms.Core.Services
@inherits Umbraco.Cms.Web.Common.Views.UmbracoViewPage
@inject ILocalizationService LocalizationService

@{
    // Get a collection of all languages
    IEnumerable<ILanguage> languages = LocalizationService.GetAllLanguages();

    // Iterate over the collection
    foreach (ILanguage language in languages)
    {

        // Get the .NET culture info
        CultureInfo cultureInfo = language.CultureInfo;

        <pre>ID: @language.Id</pre>
        <pre>Key: @language.Key</pre>
        <pre>Name: @language.CultureName</pre>
        <pre>ISO: @language.IsoCode</pre>
        <pre>Culture info: @cultureInfo</pre>
        <hr />

    }

    // Get a reference to the language by its ID
    ILanguage language1 = LocalizationService.GetLanguageById(1);

    // Get a reference to the language by its ISO code
    ILanguage language2 = LocalizationService.GetLanguageByIsoCode("en-US");

    <pre>@language1</pre>
    <pre>@language2</pre>
}

The LocalizationService acts as a "gateway" to Umbraco data for operations which are related to Dictionary items and Languages.

Browse the API documentation for ILocalizationService.

• Namespace: Umbraco.Cms.Core.Services

• Assembly: Umbraco.Core.dll

All samples in this document will require references to the following dll:

• Umbraco.Core.dll

All samples in this document will require the following using statements:

using Umbraco.Cms.Core.Services;

For Razor views:

@using Umbraco.Cms.Core.Services

Getting the service

Dependency Injection

If you wish to use the localization service in a class, you need to specify the ILocalizationService interface in your constructor:

public class MyClass
{
    private ILocalizationService _localizationService;
    
    public MyClass(ILocalizationService localizationService)
    {
        _localizationService = localizationService;
    }
}

In Razor views, you can access the localization service through the @inject directive:

@inject ILocalizationService LocalizationService

Samples

• Retrieving languages See examples on how to retrieve languages via the localization service - either individually or as a collection.