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MessageFormatter for .NET

- better UI strings.

Build & Test

This is an implementation of the ICU Message Format in .NET. For official information about the format, go to: http://userguide.icu-project.org/formatparse/messages

Quickstart

var mf = new MessageFormatter();

var str = @"You have {notifications, plural,
              zero {no notifications}
               one {one notification}
               =42 {a universal amount of notifications}
             other {# notifications}
            }. Have a nice day, {name}!";
var formatted = mf.FormatMessage(str, new Dictionary<string, object>{
  {"notifications", 4},
  {"name", "Jeff"}
});

//Result: You have 4 notifications. Have a nice day, Jeff!

Or, if you don't like dictionaries, and don't mind a bit of reflection..

var formatted = mf.FormatMessage(str, new {
  notifications = 0,
  name = "Jeff"
});

//Result: You have no notifications. Have a nice day, Jeff!

You can use a static method, too:

var formatted = MessageFormatter.Format(str, new {
  notifications = 1,
  name = "Jeff"
});

//Result: You have one notification. Have a nice day, Jeff!

Installation

Either clone this repo and build it, or install it with NuGet:

Install-Package MessageFormat

Features

Performance

If you look at MessageFormatterCachingTests, you will find a "with cache" and "without cache" test.

My machine runs on a Core i7 3960x, and with about 100,000 iterations with random data (generated beforehand), it takes about 2 seconds (1892ms) with the cache, and about 3 seconds (3236ms) without it. These results are with a debug build, when it is in release mode the time taken is reduced by about 40%! :)

Supported formats

MessageFormat.NET supports the most commonly used formats:

You can also specify a predefined style, for example {birthday, date, short}. The supported predefined styles are:

These are currently mapped to the built-in .NET format specifiers. This package does not ship with any locale data beyond the pluralizers that are generated based on CLDR data, so if you wish to provide your own localized formatting, read the section below.

Customize formatting

If you wish to control exactly how number, date and time are formatted, you can either:

Example: A custom formatter that allows the use of .NET's formatting tokens. This is for illustration purposes only and is not recommended for use in real apps.

// This is using the lambda-based approach.
var custom = new CustomValueFormatters
{
    // The formatter must set the `formatted` out parameter and return `true`
    // If the formatter returns `false`, the built-in formatting is used.
    Number = (CultureInfo _, object? value, string? style, out string? formatted) =>
    {
        formatted = string.Format($"{{0:{style}}}", value);
        return true;
    }
};

// Create a MessageFormatter with the custom value formatter.
var formatter = new MessageFormatter(locale: "en-US", customValueFormatter: custom);

// Format a message.
var message = formatter.FormatMessage("{value, number, $0.0}", new { value = 23 });
// "$23.0"

Adding your own pluralizer functions

Since MessageFormat 5.0, pluralizers based on the official CLDR data ship with the package, so this is no longer needed.

Same thing as with MessageFormat.js, you can add your own pluralizer function. The Pluralizers property is a IDictionary<string, Pluralizer>, so you can remove the built-in ones if you want.

var mf = new MessageFormatter();
mf.Pluralizers.Add("<locale>", n => {
  // ´n´ is the number being pluralized.
  if(n == 0)
    return "zero";
  if(n == 1)
    return "one";
  return "other";
});

There's no restrictions on what strings you may return, nor what strings you may use in your pluralization block.

var mf = new MessageFormatter(true, "en"); // true = use cache
mf.Pluralizers["en"] = n =>
{
    // ´n´ is the number being pluralized.
    if (n == 0)
        return "zero";
    if (n == 1)
        return "one";
    if (n > 1000)
        return "thatsalot";
    return "other";
};

mf.FormatMessage("You have {number, plural, thatsalot {a shitload of notifications} other {# notifications}}", new Dictionary<string, object>{
  {"number", 1001}
});

Escaping literals

Simple - the literals are {, } and # (in a plural block). If literals occur in the text portions, then they need to be quoted by enclosing them in pairs of single quotes ('). A pair of single quotes always represents one single quote ('' -> '), which still applies inside quoted text. (This '{isn''t}' obvious → This {isn't} obvious)

Anything else?

There's not a lot - Alex Sexton of MessageFormat.js did a great job documenting his library, and like I said, I wrote my implementation so it would be (somewhat) compatible with his.

Bugs / issues

If you have issues with the library, and the exception makes no sense, please open an issue and include your message, as well as the data you used.

Author

I'm Jeff Hansen, a software developer who likes to fiddle with string parsing when it is not too difficult. I also do a lot of ASP.NET Web API back-end development, and quite a bit of web front-end stuff.

You can find me on Twitter: @jeffijoe.