In Java, is there any way to get a Locale given its display name?

Question

That is, if I have "English (United States)" I'd like to get "en-US", or an appropriate java.util.Locale. It looks like the API is a one-way street, but perhaps I'm not looking in the right place. Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

I did this once and I don't think it's guaranteed to work all the time because the locales could be named differently in each JVM implementation. Loop through the locales until you find the one you want.

Answer 2

No, it does not appear that there is such a method in the API. However, you could create a cache using the Locales returned by Locale.getAvailableLocales(); then you can simply look up the display name in this cache.

private static Map<String, Locale> displayNames = new HashMap<String, Locale>();
static {
    for (Locale l : Locale.getAvailableLocales()) {
        displayNames.put(l.getDisplayName(), l);
    }
}

public static Locale getLocale(String displayName) {
    return displayNames.get(displayName);
}

Answer 3

Display name in which language?

Locale[] locales = Locale.getAvailableLocales();
for (Locale current : locales) {
  for (Locale test : locales) {
    System.out
        .print(test.getDisplayName(current) + " ");
  }
  System.out.println();
}

I assume that if you are dealing with locales, you need to handle multiple languages.