JSF message bundles and locales

Java Server Faces supports localization or internationalization (I18N). You choose the term. I find them to be synonymous terms and will use them interchangeably.

If you want to split hairs go here:

http://www.w3.org/International/questions/qa-i18n

I18N allows you to accomodate your software to different languages whether it be English, German or Chinese; thereby supporting web clients around the world.

One easy way to make JSP localization work is use it in a JSF enabled dynamic web project inside an OEPE enabled Eclipse IDE.

You'll need to update the faces-config.xml file, adding properties files that you've made and locales that you support.

Here's a faces-config.xml file example:

<faces-config version="1.2">
<application>
<message-bundle>resources.application</message-bundle>
<message-bundle>resources.Greeting_fr</message-bundle>
<message-bundle>resources.Greeting_en</message-bundle>
<message-bundle>resources.Greeting_de</message-bundle>
<locale-config>
<default-locale>en</default-locale>
<supported-locale>fr</supported-locale>
<supported-locale>de</supported-locale>
</locale-config>
</application>
</faces-config>

Each message-bundle element tag lists a language locale property file. In my case I put the properties files under src/resources. Note that the properties files listed inside the message-bundle tags don't come with *.properties file extension. It's implied.

Under locale-config I place supported languages. In my case I have English, French and German. My default is English.

The great thing about OEPE is the ability to add message-bundle and locale-config elements to the faces-config.xml file by using the Faces Configuration Editor. You can easily add new languages that are supported and browse for new language message bundles.

When I do want to use message bundles I can test it with the loadBundle tag and outputFormat tags inside a JSF enabled JSP page.

Here's an excerpt from the JSP page:

<f:loadBundle basename="resources.Greeting" var="greeting1" />
<h:outputFormat value="#{greeting1['login']}">
<f:param value="Joe"></f:param>
<f:param value="05/19/2010"></f:param>
</h:outputFormat>
<h:outputFormat value="#{greeting1['welcome']}"></h:outputFormat>

Note that I specify "resources.Greeting" for basename.

The first part before the dot is the folder and the second half means all the Greeting_*.properties files.

My properties files are:

1) Greeting_de.properties
2) Greeting_en.properties
3) Greeting_fr.properties.

I don't need to add the underscore.properties to basename since it's implied, meaning any file will be used for a localized message depending on the client preferred language.

The country will be figured out by what the browser passes to the server. In Internet Explorer I can change my preferred language and see a different message. This is done under Tools > Internet Preferences > General > Languages. I can easily add and rearrange the preferred languages within that Internet Explorer dialog and reload the web page to see the language change on the fly.