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Internationalised labels in JSF/Facelets

Answer 1

A:

Use ResourceBundle and property files.

Javaxpert 2008-09-18 13:07:06

Could you explain a little more? I don't know what you mean, since OP already said he's using that.

Sietse 2008-09-19 08:35:03

Answer 2

+2 A:

I've never come across another way of doing it other than outputFormat. It is unfortunately quite verbose.

The only other thing I can suggest is creating the message in a backing bean and then outputting that rather than messageFormat.

In my case I have Spring's MessageSource integrated with JSF (using MessageSourcePropertyResolver). Then, it's fairly easy in your backing beans to get parameterised messages - you just need to know which Locale your user is in (again, I've got the Locale bound to a backing bean property so it's accessible via JSF or Java).

I think parameters - particular in messages - are one thing JSF could really do better!

Phill Sacre 2008-09-18 14:46:45

Answer 3

+2 A:

I have been thinking about this more, and it occurs to me that I could probably write my own JSTL function that takes a message key and a variable number of parameters:

<h:outputText value="#{my:message('label.widget.count', widgetCount)}"/>

and if my message function HTML-encodes the result before output, I wouldn't even need to use the h:outputText

#{my:message('label.widget.count', widgetCount)}

Peter Hilton 2008-09-19 07:35:59

If you do this and get it working, please email me teh codez ;) Seriously though, it would be a great resource if you were able to release it somewhere.

Phill Sacre 2008-09-19 08:42:20

Answer 4

+3 A:

Since you're using Seam, you can use EL in the messages file.

Property:

label.widget.count = You have a total of #{widgetCount} widgets.

XHTML:

<h:outputFormat value="#{messages['label.widget.count']}" />

This still uses outputFormat, but is less verbose.

Sietse 2008-09-19 08:31:51

The only limitation of this approach is that you are tied to using this label with #{widgetCount} or you have to explicityly outject "widgetCount" to use it.

Damo 2009-04-07 12:10:12

Answer 5

+2 A:

You could create your own faces tag library to make it less verbose, something like:

<ph:i18n key="label.widget.count" p0="#{widgetCount}"/>

Then create the taglib in your view dir: /components/ph.taglib.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE facelet-taglib PUBLIC "-//Sun Microsystems, Inc.//DTD Facelet Taglib 1.0//EN" "https://facelets.dev.java.net/source/browse/*checkout*/facelets/src/etc/facelet-taglib_1_0.dtd"&gt;

<facelet-taglib xmlns="http://java.sun.com/JSF/Facelet"&gt;
    <namespace>http://peterhilton.com/core&lt;/namespace&gt;

    <tag>
        <tag-name>i18n</tag-name>
        <source>i18n.xhtml</source>
    </tag>

</facelet-taglib>

create /components/i18n.xhtml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"&gt;
<ui:composition xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"
    xmlns:ui="http://java.sun.com/jsf/facelets"
        xmlns:h="http://java.sun.com/jsf/html"        
    xmlns:f="http://java.sun.com/jsf/core"&gt;

    <h:outputFormat value="#{messages[key]}">
            <!-- crude but it works -->
        <f:param value="#{p0}" />
        <f:param value="#{p1}" />
        <f:param value="#{p2}" />
        <f:param value="#{p3}" />
    </h:outputFormat>

</ui:composition>

You can probably find an elegant way of passing the arguments with a little research.

Now register your new taglib in web.xml

<context-param>
<param-name>facelets.LIBRARIES</param-name>
<param-value>
        /components/ph.taglib.xml
    </param-value>
</context-param>

Just add xmlns:ph="http://peterhilton.com/core" to your views and you're all set!

Daan van Yperen 2009-03-17 23:11:09

Good answer, and close to what we've done so far. The main problem is that you can't use it inside attribute values.

Peter Hilton 2009-03-19 16:50:26

Answer 6

+1 A:

You can use the Seam Interpolator:

<h:outputText value="#{interpolator.interpolate(messages['label.widget.count'], widgetCount)}"/>

It has @BypassInterceptors on it so the performance should be ok.

Damo 2009-04-07 12:10:33

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Internationalised labels in JSF/Facelets

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