Struts2 internationalization using a database

Question

We have a rather large application, with a great deal of dynamic content. Is there anyway to force struts to use a database for the i18n lookups, instead of properties files?

I'd be open for other ways to solve this as well, if anyone has ever done i18n with dynamic content.

Answer 1

I don't know of an easy plug-and-play solution for this, so you will probably have to implement it yourself -- plan on spending quite a bit of time just coming to grips with how the localization features of struts 2 (and XWork) are implemented. The key will probably be to provide your own implementation of com.opensymphony.xwork2.TextProvider (and tell struts to use it by providing a <bean> tag in struts.xml). I can think of at least two ways of fitting this into the overall architecture:

• Have your TextProvider implementation access the database directly. In the spirit of YAGNI, this is probably the best way to start (you can always refactor later, if necessary).

• Alternatively, you could place the database code into an implementation of Java's ResourceBundle interface, which is what XWork uses internally. To me this sounds like an even more design-heavy approach, but on the plus side there are some articles around describing how to do this.

Answer 2

No, there is no built-in way to have Struts2 load localized content from a database. You would need to write that yourself.

What are your requirements? Do you need for users to be able to dynamically change field prompts, error messages, etc.?