If you have the ISO country code `US`, `FR`, how do you get the Locale code (`Locale.US`, `Locale.FRANCE`)?

Question

If you have the country code US, FR (ISO-3166-1 alpha-2 country code), how do you get the Locale code (Locale.US, Locale.FRANCE) to do something like this:

System.out.println(DecimalFormat.getCurrencyInstance(Locale.US).format(12.34)); System.out.println(DecimalFormat.getCurrencyInstance(Locale.FRANCE).format(12.34));  $12.34 12,34 € 

Answer 1

You can't, because a Locale is used to hold a language, not a country. It can hold a language for a specific country, and for a specific variant in this country, but it's a language first. And there is no one-to-one relationship between a language and a country. Most languages are spoken in various countries, and many countries have several languages.

If you had the country code for a language, you could use new Locale(code). But with a country code, all you can do is call getAvailableLocales, loop through the results, and find one which has your country code. But there might be several ones.

Answer 2

In Java7 there is the Locale.Builder, but before that there isn't an easy way. You can, however create a utility method:

1. loop Locale.getAvailableLocales()
2. for each check if locale.getCountryCode().equals(countryCodeParam) and return it