nekospace / Build.Resources

Embed lightweight JSON resources into your .NET application, instead of traditional .resx files.

NekoSpace.Build.Resources

Embed lightweight JSON resources into your .NET application using MSBuild Task, instead of traditional .resx files.

Features

• Compile JSON resources to binary .resources files, and embed them into assembly, results the same functionality as ResX.
• Cleaner, more human-readable content compared to ResX, even outside IDEs. (Without IDEs the .resx file is totally a mess)
• Easy to use. Just a few lines to include all JSON resources, so you won't mess up your project file.
• Support nested JSON structures.

Getting Started

First install this package using package manager or using dotnet CLI:

dotnet add package NekoSpace.Build.Resources.Json

Then, add a single line to your csproj file:

<ItemGroup>
    <!-- Embed our JSON resources. -->
    <JsonResource Include="**\*.json" Exclude="bin\**\*; obj\**\*"/>
</ItemGroup>

Create a simple JSON file, for example called ExampleResource.json:

{
  "ExampleKey": "English Content",
  "Group": {
    "ExampleSubKey": "Another English content"
  }
}

Here is a example for using the resources:

// Get the assembly which embedded our resources.
var assembly = typeof(Program).Assembly;

// Instantiate the ResourceManager to manage our resources.
var manager = new ResourceManager("UsingJsonResources.ExampleResource", assembly);

// Resource defined in ExampleResource.json, and get parsed, embedded automatically.
Console.WriteLine(manager.GetString("ExampleKey"));

// Access nested resource.
Console.WriteLine(manager.GetString("Group:ExampleSubKey"));

Localization

Same as ResX, our resources can be easily localized!

Create another JSON file called ExampleResource.zh-Hans.json:

{
  "ExampleKey": "中文内容"
}

Then get the resource string by passing a specified culture:

// Override the culture.
Console.WriteLine(manager.GetString("ExampleKey", new CultureInfo("zh-Hans")));

You can find more examples in the examples folder, such as combining usage with Microsoft.Extensions.Localization.

License

This project is under MIT license.