Localization for Struts Freemarker users

Thu, 12 Mar 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Because it took me freaking forever to find instructions on how to do this…

You do NOT need a message-resource tag in your struts configuration files. Those are outdated instructions for old versions of Struts.You do not need to edit ANY xml at all.
Your Action needs to implement Freemarker’s TemplateMethodModel interface
You need a package.properties file (the default locale) and a then another one for each other locale / language you want to support (ex. package_en_US.properties). These should be located in the same package as the Struts action that will be needing them. You can also do ClassName.properties if you want to tie some to a particular class.
Add the code snippet below to your Action. There’s a backup here if it’s borked below.

Insert localized text into the page with a call like this ${text(“property.name”)} Struts will take care of figuring out the default language from the user’s browser. If you have a better way of determining this there is documentation out there on how to programatically specify the locale you want to be used

public class MyAction extends ActionSupport implements TemplateMethodModel { /*Your functionality here */

 /**
 * when you need to display a localized piece of text in
 * the ftl just use  ${text("some.property.name")}
 * there should be a package.properties or ClassName.properties
 * file in the same source package directory as the Action that
 * will be using them. There *is* a way to set a global properties file
 * but I don't know the details.
 * Obviously the text for other languages would be specified in files like
 * package_en_US.properties
 * @return an implementation of TemplateMethodModel which takes a
 * one parameter method, the parameter is the name of the localized property
 * you want to access.
 */
public TemplateMethodModel getText(){
    return this;
}
public TemplateModel exec(List args) throws TemplateModelException {
    if (args.size() != 1) {
        throw new TemplateModelException("Wrong arguments");
    }
    return new SimpleScalar(getText((String)args.get(0)));
}

}

ecgn adds the following notes about actions:
There has to be an action class involved in the Struts/Freemarker action.

Example – the following simple page view won’t work:

<action name=”ShowLogin”>
   <result type=”freemarker”>Login.ftl</result>
</action>

To get it to work, I have to insert a “dummy” action into the process:

<action name=”ShowLogin” class=”actions.DummyAction”>
<result type=”freemarker”>Login.ftl</result>
</action>

Keywords / Google Food: localization, internationalization, i18n, freemarker, struts

The best argument for compiled languages

Sun, 19 Aug 2007 00:00:00 +0000

I keep thinking back to a short comment at BarCamp Manchester in the Unit Testing talk. When asked if anyone had written an app with 100% code coverage the guy beside me raised his hand. Now I’ve been advocating for a while now that it’s essentially wasted time to bother testing your getters and setters, and when I mentioned something to this effect he said, “How do you know you haven’t made a typo in a variable name?”

…

My mind just kind of spun for a second on that one for a second. I guess I’ve been in Java land for so long that the concept of having such a thing exist for more than a few seconds just doesn’t enter my brain. I mean first off, the IDE will bitch at you, because it can’t compile it, and even if you’re not using an IDE the compiler will bitch at you. I just responded that “I use a compiled language so that’s never something I have to worry about.”

Now, as many of you know I’m still a huge fan of languages like Perl and Ruby so I work in them fairly often. And I still say that it’s not worth your time writing tests for your getters and setters even in them because unlike Java these languages don’t have IDEs that happily spit out a getter and setter for every variable in your class regardless of if you need it or not. As a result, you only create the ones you need. And if you need them, then they’re going to be used, and if they’re used, you can pretty much guarantee that you’ll see the results of any typos show up really quickly when you test the methods that actually do something noteworthy, because they’ll use the getters and setters (otherwise why did you write them?) and either blow up when the compiler hits them or not work as expected, which is why you’re writing a test.

Java on weblog.masukomi.org

Localization for Struts Freemarker users

The best argument for compiled languages