Ideas on how to implement CMS for language specific page - database

Question

I'm building a web shop and I'm implementing language selection as well as a CMS. I also have to provide an administrator of the site with the means to be able to edit a page through the CMS.
Therein doesn't lay the problem.
The problem is how I should build up my tables for these pages. I've made my database design but didn't think the web pages part through.
I already have the following table structure for the info that is equal throughout all languages for a page (called Webpages) and for language or culture specific info (called Webpages_local).
Which attributes could I add or remove so that I can easily and dynamically perform the CRUD actions?
I'm using MVC4 with razor syntax with the following url structure:
url: "{language}/{controller}/{action}/{id}"
My main concern is now that I'm not sure on how to show the language specific content of a page when a visitor presses, for example, the link to the About page.
Maybe use the controller part of the url and save it as a key in my Webpages table and filter on that as well as the selected language?
So when a visitor goes to http://example.com/nl/About, I in my AboutController I retrieve "nl" and "about", of course filter them first and then with a query to the database select the correct nl content?
How should I go about this technically?

Answer 1

I would use OnActionExecuting to handle the retrieve lang process, something like:
protected override void OnActionExecuting(ActionExecutingContext filterContext)
{
#region set Language
var lang = string.Empty;
if (filterContext.RouteData.Values["lang"] != null && !string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(filterContext.RouteData.Values["lang"].ToString()))
{
// set the culture from the route data (url {lang})
lang = filterContext.RouteData.Values["lang"].ToString();
switch (lang)
{
case "es":
break;
case "en":
break;
default:
lang = "es";//default language
filterContext.RouteData.Values["lang"] = lang;
filterContext.HttpContext.Response.Redirect("/");
break;
}
}
else
{
//set default language
lang = "es";
filterContext.RouteData.Values["lang"] = lang;
}
Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentUICulture = CultureInfo.CreateSpecificCulture(lang);
Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture = CultureInfo.CreateSpecificCulture(lang);
#endregion
base.OnActionExecuting(filterContext);
}
Then anywhere in your code you just read the Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture (this will be your global lang indicator) to show the correct language.
UPDATE - know I understand your point =)
If the pages will be dynamically created then you wont have an ActionResult per page, you need just one ActionResult like:
public ActionResult ShowPage(int id,string slug)
{
//Use the slug to check for url attacks and ensure 301 redirections to the correct url
var page = db.Webpages_local.First(p=> p.id == id
&& p.culture.name == Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture);
return View(page);
}
For SEO reasons i would suggest you define a route like:
routes.MapRoute(
name: "LocalizedPages",
url: "{lang}/p/{slug}/{id}",
defaults: new { controller = "Page", action = "Show", id = UrlParameter.Optional },
constraints: new { lang = #"(es|en|fr|nl)" }
);
That give you urls like:
/nl/p/about/1 //the p is just an identifier for 'page', to differentiate this routes from others

Answer 2

I would add a column called language or similar to your table instead of having multiple tables.
Then your controller can fetch the right page after finding the requested language key in your menu table and then it can read the content in your webpages table.