A PropertyResourceBundle is definitely the easiest bundle to implement.
If your application contains String objects that need to be translated into different languages, you should store these String objects in a ResourceBundle that is backed up by a set of properties files.
Since the properties files are simple text files, they can be created and maintained by the translators.
A typical properties file would look something like:
key1=value1
key2=value2
key3=value3
key4=value4
Windows programmers can draw an analogy between an .ini file and a properties file (quite crudely actually ).
Think of each locale having its own ini file that contains all the strings in that locale's encoding.
You can create additional properties files containing the translated values as needed, to support different locales.
No changes to your source code are required, because your program references the keys, not the values.
The running Java program can identify the resource bundle and corresponding properties file directly as before using getBundle only if you use the ".properties" extension to the files.
There is another way to force loading of a particular property file using the constructor for the PropertyResourceBundle class:
PropertyResourceBundle(InputStream) and the getResourceAsStream(String) method in the java.lang.Class class.
A typical usage would look something like:
PropertyResourceBundle labels = new PropertyResourceBundle(
new ProgramName().getClass().getResourceAsStream("MyProgramResource.txt"));
A word of caution with the PropertyResourceBundle!
How do you save your properties file that contains non-ASCII characters of say Asian languages?
Well you simply can't! The Java 1.1 java.util.propertyResourcebundle class can read only ISO 8859_1 characters.
i.e. : 8 bit characters sometimes called the ANSI code.
Some sources may seem to imply that if you use Unicode escape codes to represent Unicode characters, or run native2ascii on the properties file to translate it into Unicode, everything will be fine.
The fact actually remains that Property files are read byte by byte, with no character code conversion and if the characters in the file are specified in the \uXXXX format then it will only work as long as the higher order bytes are zeroes i.e. ISO 8859_1 .
This makes PropertyResourceBundle unsuitable for translated messages.
The flaw will eventually be remedied perhaps when the Properties class is made locale aware and can handle non-Western European languages.
Sameer Tyagi is a Software Engineer with several years of programming experience in iNet application development and has conducted multiple training workshops in Java. Besides holding an Engineering degree in Electronics he is a Sun Certified Java 1.1 Programmer.
Email: sameertyagi@usa.net
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