Java Platform Localization Classes

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Java Platform Localization Classes

Internationalizing and Localizing Web
Applications

The process of preparing an application to support more than one language and data format is
called internationalization. Localization is the process of adapting an internationalized
application to support a specific region or locale. Examples of locale-dependent information
include messages and user interface labels, character sets and encoding, and date and currency
formats. Although all client user interfaces should be internationalized and localized, it is
particularly important for web applications because of the global nature of the web.

Java Platform Localization Classes

In the Java 2 platform,

java.util.Locale

represents a specific geographical, political, or cultural

region. The string representation of a locale consists of the international standard
two-character abbreviation for language and country and an optional variant, all separated by
underscore (_) characters. Examples of locale strings include fr (French), de_CH (Swiss
German), and en_US_POSIX (English on a POSIX-compliant platform).

Locale-sensitive data is stored in a

java.util.ResourceBundle

. A resource bundle contains

key-value pairs, where the keys uniquely identify a locale-specific object in the bundle. A
resource bundle can be backed by a text file (properties resource bundle) or a class (list resource
bundle) containing the pairs. You construct resource bundle instance by appending a locale
string representation to a base name.

For more details on internationalization and localization in the Java 2 platform, see

http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/i18n/index.html

In the web technology chapters, the Duke's Bookstore applications contain resource bundles
with the base name messages.BookstoreMessages for the locales en_US, fr_FR, de_DE, and
es_MX

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