Multilingual site on Orchard CMS with single codebase and content database depending on domain name

When we need to create multilingual site on Orchard we have several options:

1. Create site on first basic language, then copy content database and translate all content. In this case we will have 2 separate databases and will need to maintain them separately, although codebase can be the same (however you will still need to create separate sites in IIS in order to specify different connection strings in \App_Data\Sites\Default\Settings.txt). Also you will need new content database for each new language;
2. After creating the site on basic language go to Admin panel > Settings and add necessary languages to the list of available languages (via “Add or remove supported cultures for the site” link). After that in Modules install and enable Localization module which allows to create languages variations for each content item, like pages. There will be “New translation” under each page:

Using other module called “Culture layer” you may create new layers in Widgets for separate languages. E.g. this is how you may create layer for front page for Russian and English languages:

Name	Rule
TheHomepage ru-RU	url("~/") and lang("ru-RU")
TheHomepage en-US	url("~/") and lang("en-US")

(lang rule is added with “Culture layer” module). After that you may add different widgets and define localized content in different layers.

Now when you will change language in Settings > Default site culture, you will see localized content. But in this case it still will be needed to have different site in IIS and different copies of content databases for each site which will have only one difference in Default site culture, which isn’t good. The better way would be to make it so that site language will be selected automatically based on the domain name of the site? I.e. when we visit site by http://example.ru it will use Russian, but when by http://example.com – English, while both host headers will point to the single IIS site. The answer is yes, it is possible with Orchard.

In order to do it we will need to create new Module for our site. Into Content folder our module we will put text file with list of domains of 1st level and appropriate locale names:

ru:ru-RU;com:en-US

Then we create new class which inherits ICultureSelector interface from Orchard framework. It will parse text file with locales and depending on current host name will choose the correct one:

   1: public class CultureSelector : ICultureSelector

   2: {

   3:     private const string DEFAULT_CULTURE = "ru-RU";

   4:     private const int CULTURE_PRIORITY = 1000;

   5:  

   6:     public CultureSelectorResult GetCulture(HttpContextBase context)

   7:     {

   8:         var defaultCulture = new CultureSelectorResult {Priority = CULTURE_PRIORITY,

   9: CultureName = DEFAULT_CULTURE};

  10:         try

  11:         {

  12:             var locales = this.getLocales();

  13:             if (!locales.Any())

  14:             {

  15:                 return defaultCulture;

  16:             }

  17:  

  18:             string host = HttpContext.Current.Request.Url.Host;

  19:             int idx = host.LastIndexOf(".");

  20:             if (idx < 0)

  21:             {

  22:                 return defaultCulture;

  23:             }

  24:             var currentDomain = host.Substring(idx + 1).ToLower();

  25:             var currentLocale = locales.FirstOrDefault(l =>

  26: l.Domain == currentDomain);

  27:             if (currentLocale == null)

  28:             {

  29:                 return defaultCulture;

  30:             }

  31:             return new CultureSelectorResult {Priority = CULTURE_PRIORITY,

  32: CultureName = currentLocale.Locale};

  33:         }

  34:         catch

  35:         {

  36:             return defaultCulture;

  37:         }

  38:     }

  39:  

  40:     private List<dynamic> getLocales()

  41:     {

  42:         string path = HttpContext.Current.Server.

  43: MapPath("~/Modules/Example.Localization/Content/locales.txt");

  44:         string locales = File.ReadAllText(path);

  45:         if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(locales))

  46:         {

  47:             return new List<dynamic>();

  48:         }

  49:  

  50:         string[] pairs = locales.Split(new[] { ';' },

  51: StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries);

  52:         if (!pairs.Any())

  53:         {

  54:             return new List<dynamic>();

  55:         }

  56:  

  57:         var result = new List<dynamic>();

  58:         foreach (string pair in pairs)

  59:         {

  60:             int idx = pair.IndexOf(":");

  61:             if (idx < 0)

  62:             {

  63:                 continue;

  64:             }

  65:  

  66:             result.Add(new {Domain = pair.Substring(0, idx),

  67: Locale = pair.Substring(idx + 1)});

  68:         }

  69:         return result;

  70:     }

  71: }

Now if we will open our site in ru domain, we will see Russian content, while in com – English.