Setting Sitecore.Context.Language gives me Items in the wrong language one time - asp.net

Question

I have this page (item) in my Sitecore website that is viewed from a Facebook page tab. It's a rather simple page, but I have an issue with Sitecore giving me the wrong language on first load, then subsequent loads are ok.
This item runs through this controller:
//
// GET: /Portfolio/
public override ActionResult Index()
{
var appId = "*****";
var appSecret = "*****";
// Defaults to en
var requestLanguage = "en";
// Get language from FB
if (Request.Form["signed_request"] != null)
{
if (Request.Url.Host.ToLower().Contains("local")) {
appId = "*****";
appSecret = "*****";
}
var fbUser = new Facebook.FacebookClient
{
AppId = appId,
AppSecret = appSecret
};
var parsedSignedRequest = JObject.Parse(fbUser.ParseSignedRequest(Request.Form["signed_request"]).ToString());
if (parsedSignedRequest != null)
{
requestLanguage = parsedSignedRequest["user"]["locale"].ToString().StartsWith("fr") ? "fr-CA" : "en";
} // Else: Request can't be parsed, something is wrong
} // Else: Probably not in FB
// ?l=***** can bypass language setting
if (!string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(Request.QueryString["l"]))
{
requestLanguage = Request.QueryString["l"];
}
Context.Language = Language.Parse(requestLanguage);
// Views will need this
ViewBag.requestLanguage = requestLanguage;
ViewBag.appId = appId;
return base.Index();
}
When I debug this, it works perfectly. I'm setting Sitecore's Context.Language to that of what the Facebook user uses (I have french and english content).
Now onto views, I have this master layout that basically just (other than boring html markup) places the placeholder:
#Html.Sitecore().Placeholder("fb-body")
Finally, my view rendering looks like this:
#using Sitecore.Globalization
#using Sitecore.Data.Items
#model RenderingModel
#{
// I checked this and the context language here is always correctly set, even on first load (controller did that)
// Sitecore.Context.Language = Language.Parse(ViewBag.requestLanguage);
var all = "All";
var back = "Back";
var projetTitle = "the project";
var servicesTitle = "services";
// Since my language is correctly set, this works fine
if (Language.Current.Name.ToLowerInvariant().Contains("fr"))
{
all = "Tous les projets";
back = "Retour";
projetTitle = "le projet";
servicesTitle = "services";
}
var portfolio = Model.Item.Parent.Children.FirstOrDefault(x => x.TemplateName == "Portfolio");
var wrongLanguage = portfolio.Language;
var wrongLanguage2 = Model.Item.Language;
}
Here when I pull my portfolio node, it's in the wrong language. If I look in Model.Item.Language, I also get the wrong language.
What am I missing here, is there something else I need to tell Sitecore so that he understands my language? This also sort of looks like a caching issue... Where do I look to solve this?
Thanks!

Answer 1

I am not sure what base controller you have set up, but it seems you make use of the PageContext.Current.PageView either by returning it yourself or inheriting from the SitecoreController. I bumped into some issues trying to reproduce the problem so I ended up with this:
public class TestController : Controller
{
public ActionResult Index()
{
Sitecore.Context.SetLanguage(Language.Parse("nl-NL"), true);
var view = (PageContext.Current.PageView) as RenderingView;
var renderer = view.Rendering.Renderer as ViewRenderer;
renderer.ViewPath = "/Views/Test/Index.cshtml";
return View(view);
}
}
And in my view I render:
#model Sitecore.Mvc.Presentation.RenderingModel
Context language is: #Sitecore.Context.Language<br/>
Model language is: #Model.Item.Language
First time result:
Context language is: nl-NL
Model language is: en
Second time result:
Context language is: nl-NL
Model language is: nl-NL
The problem is that the language resolver first sets the language to the default (being 'en') and when it gets into your controller action it has already fetched the Item with 'en'. So your language adjustment comes in too late. The second time it is loaded in correct language because the adjusted language was persisted in a cookie.
A proper place to set the language would be the LanguageResolver. You can override/extend the LanguageResolver and replace it in the httpRequestBegin pipeline. That way you will also prevent localized content being cached with the default language in the cachekey.