Internationalization in JSF and JSTL

Many web application frameworks provide internationalization features to support the use of different languages, like JSTL(JavaServer Pages Standard Tag Library) and JSF. In this paper, I will present the way to enable globalization support in JSTL and JSF.

Prepare

To make the globalization happen, it is required to have resource bundles where all displayable strings are stored. The resource bundles should be organized by languages under the JavaResource nls folder (if the folder does not existed, create one) which will be generated later under WEB-INF/classes.

In this example, it has three resource bundles (Default, English, and German). Each file contains key value definition, like:

Defult:
year = Year
begin = Begin
end = End

English:
year = Year
begin = Begin
end = End

German:
year = Jahr
begin = von
end = bis

In the portlet application portlet.xml, you need to indicate which languages are supported:

…

<supported-locale>en</supported-locale>

<supported-locale>de</supported-locale>

<resource-bundle>co.editorialtssearchmask.nl.SearchMask </resource-bundle>

…

JSTL

JSTL provides the tag library fmt to make the globalization possible. To enable this feature, you need to follow the steps below:

• In JSP file, add fmt taglib definition:

<%@taglib uri="http://java.sun.com/jstl/fmt" prefix="fmt"%> 

• Indicate where the resource bundle file is:

<fmt:setBundle basename="at.co.editorialtssearchmask.nl.SearchMask"/>

• Use the fmt tag to specify the key word defined in resource bundles.

   <fmt:message key="year"/>

For more information, you could refer to IBM Redbook: RAD V6 Portlet Application Development and Portal Tools (sg246681), chapter 12.8.

JSF

• In faces-config.xml file, define the supported locale and the location of resource bundle:

<application>

      <locale-config>

                  <supported-locale>de</supported-locale>

                  <supported-locale>en</supported-locale>

      </locale-config>

 <message-bundle>at.co.editorialtssearchmask.nl.SearchMask</message-bundle>

</application>

• In JSF page, specify the resource bundle using <f:loadBundle>

<f:loadBundle basename="at.co.editorialtssearchmask.nl.SearchMask" var="message" />

• In JSF component, specify the key:

<h:outputText id="text1" styleClass="outputText" value="#{message.year}">

The use of JSF globalization features is very well presented in the Paper: Globalizing Web applications with JSF and WebSphere Studio

If it is necessary, these two ways can be combined in one JSP file.