Question

According to the Adobe asdocs, Flex framework files are supposed to be able to be loaded at runtime. These localized framework files, the ones that exist at (on windows) C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\Adobe Flash Builder 4.5\sdks\4.5.0\frameworks\locale, are responsible for items such as button text on Alert Dialogs, and a host of other controls. My expectation is that once these framework files are loaded I would see these resources available in my Flex app.

I’ve set up my project as follows:

MyProject
   -src
   -Flex4.5
   -Referenced Libraries
   -bin-debug
   -bin-release
   -libs
   -locale (I've copied all of the directories(da_DK,en_US,es_ES,etc) of framework files for the locales I want to support inside of this dir)

Now the asdocs state that in order to do this, you have to set the compiler settings to read

-locale=en_US,da_DK,de_DE,es_ES,fi_FI,fr_FR,it_IT,ja_JP,ko_KR,nb_NO,nl_NL,pt_BR,ru_RU,sv_SE,zh_CN,zh_TW -allow-source-path-overlap=true -source-path=locale/{locale}

which I have done.

My Build Path Libraries for Flex 4.5 - C:Program Files (x86)\Adobe\Adobe Flash Builder 4.5\sdks\4.5.0 are set to be Runtime Shared library (of note, the {locale} subfolder says "Merged into code")

But when I change the language in the browser, I’m not seeing any of the framework resources.

Also, when I build my project, I don’t see any indication of the locale-oriented resource files in the bin-release. Since we only deploy the contents of the bin-release folder (and not the entire project), how is this supposed to work?

I am also seeing .swz files in my bin-release (and I know these arent the localized framework resources).

Does anyone have any experience with Runtime Framework Localization?? What am I doing wrong? My expectation is that once I build my project (with the framework resources externalized) that the app would be able to load those resources, but this isn’t happening and I am not interested in compiling a different version of my app for all of the locales I support.

Thanks in advance

Answer 1

I use the following ANT task which works for me:

<mxmlc file="${build.dir.src}/${mxml.file}" keep-generated-actionscript="false" output="${build.dir.stage}/${project.app.name}.swf" 
        actionscript-file-encoding="UTF-8" incremental="false" context-root="${project.app.name}" optimize="${app.optimize}"
        debug="${app.debug}" configname="air" locale="en_US,ja_JP,fr_FR">

<jvmarg value="-Xmx1024m" />
<jvmarg value="-Xms512m" />

<compiler.theme append="true" file="${FLEX_HOME}/frameworks/projects/spark/MXFTEText.css" />

<source-path path-element="${FLEX_HOME}/frameworks" />
<source-path path-element="${build.dir.locale.src}/{locale}" />

<library-path dir="${FLEX_HOME}/frameworks/libs" append="true">
    <include name="*.swc" />
</library-path>
<library-path dir="${FLEX_HOME}/frameworks/libs/air" append="true">
    <include name="*.swc" />
</library-path>
<library-path dir="${FLEX_HOME}/frameworks/locale" append="true">
    <include name="{locale}" />
</library-path>
<library-path dir="${build.dir.lib}" append="true">
    <include name="*.swc" />
</library-path>

Add the following tag to the classes that use resources and read the strings in the way:

[ResourceBundle('application')]

// set up the locale chain
ResourceManager.getInstance().localeChain = [ 'en_US', 'ja_JP', 'fr_FR' ];

// load resources
ResourceManager.getInstance().getString('application', 'some.string.code');

An observation: One does not need to copy the framework files into one’s project folder. They will be picked up the compiler when compiling.

Let me know if it works, else we can debug more!