Finding the user’s current region using RegionInfo in .NET C#

The CultureInfo object helps a lot in finding information about the user’s current culture. However, on occasion it may not be enough and you need to find out more about that user’s regional characteristics. You can easily retrieve a RegionInfo object from CultureInfo which will hold information about a particular country or region.

You can find the current region in two ways from CultureInfo:

CultureInfo cultureInfo = Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture;
RegionInfo regionInfo = new RegionInfo(cultureInfo.LCID);
// or 
regionInfo = new RegionInfo(cultureInfo.Name);

string englishName = regionInfo.EnglishName;
string currencySymbol = regionInfo.CurrencySymbol;
string currencyEnglishName = regionInfo.CurrencyEnglishName;
string currencyLocalName = regionInfo.CurrencyNativeName;

My computer is set to use Swedish-Sweden as the specific culture so I get the following values from top to bottom:

• Sweden
• kr
• Swedish krona
• Svensk krona

If I change the current culture to my home country, i.e. Hungary…

CultureInfo hungaryCulture = new CultureInfo("hu-HU");
Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture = hungaryCulture;
regionInfo = new RegionInfo(hungaryCulture.LCID);
englishName = regionInfo.EnglishName;
currencySymbol = regionInfo.CurrencySymbol;
currencyEnglishName = regionInfo.CurrencyEnglishName;
currencyLocalName = regionInfo.CurrencyNativeName;

…then the values are of course adjusted accordingly:

• Hungary
• Ft
• Hungarian Forint
• forint

Read all posts related to Globalisation in .NET here.