How to employ internationalization for JSF bean properties?

Question

I would like to display an internationalized message in the place holder below. All examples I'm hitting, work with a message bundle defined in faces-config and simply use that bundle name. But that works only when we know what message key to use. This isn't the case here.

Consider this basic example:

<h:dataTable border="1" value="#{indexBean.webAdminCatalogList}" var="menuItem">
    <h:column>#{message key here}</h:column>
</h:dataTable>

The code above loops through a list. Each menuItem variable contains a titleMessageCode which corresponds to a field in the bundle properties files. How do you go about fetching a message using menuItem.titleMessageCode? Is there a special JSF tag or are such internationalized labels prepared when constructing the bean?

BalusC BalusC · Accepted Answer · 2013-12-17T08:46:36

You can use the brace notation #{map[dynamicKey]} to use a dynamic variable as map key. Given a bundle name of text, here's an example:

<h:dataTable border="1" value="#{indexBean.webAdminCatalogList}" var="menuItem">
    <h:column>#{text[menuItem.titleMessageCode]}</h:column>
</h:dataTable>

Note that this is not specific to JSF, but to EL. Those #{} things are not part of JSF, they are part of EL (Expression Language). JSF just happens to make use of it. See also our EL wiki page.

How to employ internationalization for JSF bean properties?

1 Answers