Resource bundles contain locale-specific objects. When your program needs a
locale-specific resource, a String for example, your program can load it from
the resource bundle that is appropriate for the current user's locale. In this
way, you can write program code that is largely independent of the user's locale
isolating most, if not all, of the locale-specific information in resource
bundles.
This allows you to write programs that can:
be easily localized, or translated, into different languages
handle multiple locales at once
be easily modified later to support even more locales
Resource bundles belong to families whose members share a common base name, but
whose names also have additional components that identify their locales. For
example, the base name of a family of resource bundles might be "MyResources".
The family should have a default resource bundle which simply has the same name
as its family - "MyResources" - and will be used as the bundle of last resort if
a specific locale is not supported. The family can then provide as many
locale-specific members as needed, for example a German one named
"MyResources_de".
Each resource bundle in a family contains the same items, but the items have
been translated for the locale represented by that resource bundle. For example,
both "MyResources" and "MyResources_de" may have a String that's used on a
button for canceling operations. In "MyResources" the String may contain
"Cancel" and in "MyResources_de" it may contain "Abbrechen".
If there are different resources for different countries, you can make
specializations: for example, "MyResources_de_CH" contains objects for the
German language (de) in Switzerland (CH). If you want to only modify some of the
resources in the specialization, you can do so.
When your program needs a locale-specific object, it loads the ResourceBundle
class using the getBundle method:
ResourceBundle myResources = ResourceBundle.getBundle("MyResources",
currentLocale);
Resource bundles contain key/value pairs. The keys uniquely identify a
locale-specific object in the bundle. Here's an example of a ListResourceBundle
that contains two key/value pairs:
public class MyResources extends ListResourceBundle { public Object[][]
getContents() { return contents; } static final
Object[][] contents = { // LOCALIZE THIS {"OkKey", "OK"},
{"CancelKey", "Cancel"}, // END OF MATERIAL TO LOCALIZE }; }
Keys are always Strings. In this example, the keys are "OkKey" and "CancelKey".
In the above example, the values are also Strings--"OK" and "Cancel"--but they
don't have to be. The values can be any type of object.
You retrieve an object from resource bundle using the appropriate getter method.
Because "OkKey" and "CancelKey" are both strings, you would use getString to
retrieve them:
button1 = new Button(myResources.getString("OkKey")); button2 = new
Button(myResources.getString("CancelKey"));
The getter methods all require the key as an argument and return the object if
found. If the object is not found, the getter method throws a
MissingResourceException.
Besides getString, ResourceBundle also provides a method for getting string
arrays, getStringArray, as well as a generic getObject method for any other type
of object. When using getObject, you'll have to cast the result to the
appropriate type. For example:
int[] myIntegers = (int[]) myResources.getObject("intList");
The Java 2 platform provides two subclasses of ResourceBundle,
ListResourceBundle and PropertyResourceBundle, that provide a fairly simple way
to create resources. As you saw briefly in a previous example,
ListResourceBundle manages its resource as a List of key/value pairs.
PropertyResourceBundle uses a properties file to manage its resources.
If ListResourceBundle or PropertyResourceBundle do not suit your needs, you can
write your own ResourceBundle subclass. Your subclasses must override two
methods: handleGetObject and getKeys().
The following is a very simple example of a ResourceBundle subclass,
MyResources, that manages two resources (for a larger number of resources you
would probably use a Hashtable). Notice that you don't need to supply a value if
a "parent-level" ResourceBundle handles the same key with the same value (as for
the okKey below).
Example:
// default (English language, United States) public class MyResources extends
ResourceBundle { public Object handleGetObject(String key) { if
(key.equals("okKey")) return "Ok"; if (key.equals("cancelKey")) return
"Cancel"; return null; } } // German language public class
MyResources_de extends MyResources { public Object handleGetObject(String
key) { // don't need okKey, since parent level handles it. if
(key.equals("cancelKey")) return "Abbrechen"; return null; } }
You do not have to restrict yourself to using a single family of
ResourceBundles. For example, you could have a set of bundles for exception
messages, ExceptionResources (ExceptionResources_fr, ExceptionResources_de,
...), and one for widgets, WidgetResource (WidgetResources_fr,
WidgetResources_de, ...); breaking up the resources however you like.