Messages

I18n will attempt to find your messages on two different structures. Message Files and Message Folders.

Message File

I18n follows a simple convention for naming messages file (a properties file).

messages.properties => The file I18n will use if it can't find a specific message 

                  properties file.

messages_something.properties => "something" will be the code for the language. So, 

                  if the file is named messages_pt-BR.properties, it will be 

                  responsible for pt-BR lang code.

Inside the files, just add your keys and values:

your.key = Any text you want to display

Message Folder

When we started using i18n everyday, sometimes we had to add really long messages that were quite hard to maintain on a property file. To deal with this problem, we created this way of adding messages. Your message will be inside a file named after your message key. For example:

i18n_lang == pt_BR

your message key = your.key

I18n will look for your message at /i18n/pt_BR/your.key . If it's not there, it will try to read /i18n/default/your.key .

So, where is my key?

It's not really hard to get it. Let's assume that your i18n_lang is pt_BR and your i18n key is your.awesome.message :

First, i18n will look for the key your.awesome.message inside /messages_ptBR.properties
if it's not there, it will look into /messages.properties
if can't find again, will look inside /i18n/pt_BR/your.awesome.message
if it can't read the file, will attempt to read /i18n/default/your.awesome.message
If at this point it couldn't find it, will simply give up and print ??? your.awesome.message ??? on the jsp.