Working with files is one of the most common tasks when developing any Windows Phone or Windows apps. In this mini-series of articles I’ll show you available APIs in all Windows Phone and Windows versions, caveats when doing task such as checking if specific file exists, getting target file, reading writing data from/to files and also how to effectively extract data from ZIP files, and more.

In the first part of this series I’ll discuss available File IO APIs in Windows Phone 8, 8.1 Silverlight, 8.1 XAML, Windows 8 and 8.1 platforms and benchmark all available methods for testing, if target file in Local Folder exists, or not. To my great surprise, the performance of methods in StorageFolder API is dramatically different across different platforms and it’s not a good idea to use single approach everywhere.

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When developing Windows Phone 8 or Windows 8 app for more wider audience, you need to think about the localization. Unfortunately the localization on each platform uses completely different approach:

On Windows Phone 8:

• Standard resx files with strings for each language are used.
• The default language, for instance “en”, has localization in file without any suffix, typically just AppResources.resx.
• Other languages uses files with culture specific suffix, like AppResources.de.resx, AppResources.cs.resx, etc.
• For supporting non-default languages it’s required to check the additional languages in WMAppManifest.xml file and in the project settings as well
• Localization in XAML is done typically via databinding to viewmodel class, that has instance of AppResources class, typically:
• <TextBlock Text=”{Binding Loc.AppTitle, Source={StaticResource Localization}}“/>
• in AppResources.resx:   |   AppTitle   |   Hello world!   |
• For accessing the localized string programatically you can use:
• string text = AppResources.AppTitle;
• Globalization and localization for Windows Phone

On Windows 8(.1)

• Windows 8 uses for localization new file types ending with .resw, but actually they use completely equal structure as WP8 .resx files.
• Each file must be placed in a separate folder, for instance English localization should be placed in Strings/en/Resources.resw, German localization in Strings/de/Resources.resw
• There are no automatically generated Designer.cs files for these resw files, but you can create manually ResourceLoader class for returning localized strings.
• In Windows 8 the localization of Controls in XAML is done differently. Rather than assigning directly values using databinding, you just name each localizable control with x:Uid property and then add entry for localizing such property directly into resw file:
• <TextBlock x:Uid=”TextBlock1″ Text=”DesignTimeText”/>
• in AppResources.resw:   |   TextBlock1.Text   |   Hello world!   |
• For accessing the localized string programatically you can use:
• ResourceLoader resourceLoader = new ResourceLoader();
  string text = resourceLoader.GetString(“TextBlock1.Text”);
• Application resources and localization sample (Windows 8.1)

As you can see, the recommended localization uses completely different approach in Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8. Sharing resx files using links, or even copying them or renaming is just not feasible to maintain. Beside these obvious differences, there are even other caveats:

• Accessing localized strings in Windows 8 projects programatically is really cumbersome and you can make simply error, because you have no direct compile time check, that “TextBlock1.Text” actually exists in the resw file.
• You cannot share any localized XAML code between Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8, because of the different localization method

Let’s see, how to solve this mess once and for all

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