R – Finding the client’s timezone and culture via web service

ajaxcross-browserinternationalizationnet

I have a .NET web service.

It serves AJAX requests from web users.

I would simply like to know how to automatically get the user's timezone… Not current time offset, but the actual timezone – like, Central Standard Time is -5:00 right now, but Eastern Standard Time will be -5:00 once daylight savings is over. I want to differentiate these users.

I would also like to know how to get their culture settings ("en-US", etc.) so I can render DateTimes and numbers from my web service to their specific preferences.

Any Javascript or .NET solution will work.
Thanks.

Note: Asking the user would be a complete last resort, since it's a web service.

Best Answer

Assuming your clients connect to the webservice from a browser, you can use Request.Headers["Accept-Language"] to detect the browser's culture settings.It is not possible to get the timezone directly from the server, you need some javascript on the client to compute a time difference between their local clock and GMT.

If your webservice is consumed diferently (ie. not from a browser), you will need to add these two pieces of information as parameters to your webservice methods.

This is the style that Microsoft tends to use in their examples.

It appears that the guidance in this area may have changed, as StyleCop now enforces the use of the C# specific aliases.

C# – the difference between const and readonly in C#

Apart from the apparent difference of

having to declare the value at the time of a definition for a const VS readonly values can be computed dynamically but need to be assigned before the constructor exits.. after that it is frozen.
const's are implicitly static. You use a ClassName.ConstantName notation to access them.

There is a subtle difference. Consider a class defined in AssemblyA.

public class Const_V_Readonly
{
  public const int I_CONST_VALUE = 2;
  public readonly int I_RO_VALUE;
  public Const_V_Readonly()
  {
     I_RO_VALUE = 3;
  }
}

AssemblyB references AssemblyA and uses these values in code. When this is compiled:

in the case of the const value, it is like a find-replace. The value 2 is 'baked into' the AssemblyB's IL. This means that if tomorrow I update I_CONST_VALUE to 20, AssemblyB would still have 2 till I recompile it.
in the case of the readonly value, it is like a ref to a memory location. The value is not baked into AssemblyB's IL. This means that if the memory location is updated, AssemblyB gets the new value without recompilation. So if I_RO_VALUE is updated to 30, you only need to build AssemblyA and all clients do not need to be recompiled.

So if you are confident that the value of the constant won't change, use a const.

public const int CM_IN_A_METER = 100;

But if you have a constant that may change (e.g. w.r.t. precision).. or when in doubt, use a readonly.

public readonly float PI = 3.14;

Update: Aku needs to get a mention because he pointed this out first. Also I need to plug where I learned this: Effective C# - Bill Wagner

Best Answer

Related Solutions

C# – the difference between String and string in C#

This is the style that Microsoft tends to use in their examples.

C# – the difference between const and readonly in C#

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